When writing out my goals for the year, I also wrote out goals for each of my kids.
Obviously, if they didn’t reach my goals for them, it more likely means I dropped the ball, but still I thought they should have defined goals that we can work on as a family.
One goal for my 4 year old, was to learn her letters and letter sounds, before starting school in the fall. She already knew the alphabet song, but couldn’t recognize each letter or their sounds when looking at words or by looking at the letter magnates on the fridge.
I regularly sing the alphabet song with my two girls but, I have no faith in my patience or creativity to keep them engaged long enough to actually learn what each letter looks like and their sound.
As with anything I don’t know how to do, I Googled it. I found a number of mommy blogs tooting a cartoon DVD, they simply got their kids to watch.
Many said within a couple of weeks of watching it, their kids had the letters and letter sounds down. I know how to work our DVD player, I can do this! :)
When the video first arrived, my 4 year old was not a huge fan, she did not want to watch it.
I didn’t argue with her, I just said, “Fine it’s your turn now to watch a show, but when your show is over it’s my turn and I want to watch the Letter Factory.” I had to do this a handful of times before she actually started asking for it.
I got it for my 4 year old but of course thought it might give my 2 year old a head start. I was surprised to see and hear my 2 year old pointing out letters and saying their sounds so soon. My husband didn’t believe me at first.
See for yourself:
All because we bought Leap Frogs, The Letter Factor from Amazon. The Leap Frog Toy is not needed to get the same letter recognition results, although both kids love the toy and it does give them more practice.
Now I need to work on numbers with the 2 year old. Back to Google I go.
