Letter Recognition

I have two 3yos right now and one 5yo and have done most of the same thing with all of them. We are big fans of the Leap Frog Letter Factory video – that has helped all my boys. Then the gentle ways I “quiz” them about their letters is to have them go find the fridge magnet that makes the ___ sound (we also have the Leap Frog fridge phonics – I put tape over the speaker so it isn’t so loud – I hate toys with batteries! but this one I can deal with). I will also let mine sit in my lap at the computer and find the different letters on the keyboard. When we are reading books (especially ones with bigger print) I’ll get them to search for a particular letter. We will also say “what does ____ start with”? – they have actually started asking me “mamma, what belongs to _____” (meaning what letter does that word start with). When we are out and they see big signs, they will often say “mamma, look that has a __ on it!” (they always say the sound, not the letter name). A while back I thought I’d just see how well they were doing seeing as we hadn’t done any “formal” lessons on our letters, so I got out some letter flash cards and they knew all but a handful of the sounds! I was amazed! This is what I did with my first son and reading came very easy for him (I just kept watching for cues that he was ready to move on to the next level of blending) – I hope it does for these guys as well. HTH!

Lesley

The other thing that I thought of after I had made my original posting above is puzzles.  My ds2-1/2 LOVES puzzles and we have a couple of nice ABC puzzles.  One is the Lauri crepe rubber one – there is an upper and lower case version, we have the upper case one.  We also have one – I’m sorry I can’t say who made it because it is packed away in storage at the moment – but it is a wooden puzzle where the illustrations on each letter-shaped piece is something that starts with that letter (A is an alligator, I is an ice cream cone, W is a waffle, etc).  Very cute.   And when they are ready for associating upper and lower case letters together I’ve seen little sets of 2 piece jigsaw puzzles where you match the upper and lower cases together.   Sorry I don’t have links for you – all that to say that there are a lot of fun ABC type puzzles out there and my kids have really enjoyed playing with them. =)

Jen