L M N O peas

Grace has been learning the first letters of the alphabet. At the beginning of the summer, my goal was that she would recognize A-G by the time we were both back to school. We have been playing with capital letters in a variety of materials - foam letters that float in the bath, an alphabet train puzzle, Fridge Phonics (magnetic letters that sing a song), flash cards, games on the iPad, pointing out letters in books, on clothing, at the store, etc. One day this summer we went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and as we were walking to the store she shouted, "Mommy, I see B!" Wooo-hooo!

"Playing" with letters after our picnic dinner on the deck.

So, how did we do? Well, Grace can consistently identify A, B, C and G. Most of the time she gets D. She knows O because it is a circle. And we are still working on E and F. I love that almost all the letters in her name fall within the first 7 letters of the alphabet because it has really helped with Grace being able to recognize her name when she sees it. I know we have far to go, but I think she is starting to realize that letters mean something and that they have names and sounds.

We also borrowed a bunch of alphabet books from the library and found most of them to be kind of boring. But I thought this one "LMNO Peas" by Keith Baker was clever and we even had peas with dinner to stay with the theme!And, I tried to combine a little tactile fun with writing letters. Grace loves Princess Presto on the PBS series "Super Why" (and the iPad game to go with it) where she can see and practice how letters are written. With that in mind, I put some paint into a gallon Ziploc bag and sealed it so we could squish it and practice forming letters. Grace was interested to a point, making shapes and watching how the colors changed as they mixed. It wasn't exactly what I had planned, but I think it was a good learning experience. When we were done playing with it the colors went from a rainbow to like the blues and greens in the ocean. I expect it will eventually be just a dark brown or black. The color shouldn't matter though....as long as we keep learning fun, fresh, and interesting!