Now I Know My ABCs

I feel like there are two major movements in the parenting of toddlers these days. One is drill and kill, quizzing them nonstop on numbers, colors, shapes and letters, Tiger Mom style. The other is to haphazardly almost ignore anything academic for fear that it would buzzkill their magical childhood experience. Of course, I would assume most mommas (me included) fall somewhere in between. 

My view on all of Forest’s knowledge is this: I try to expose him to lots of different experiences, but if he is not interested in something there is not much I can do to make him artificially so. Otherwise he’d be a sports prodigy. You know how much interest he has in catching a ball? Zero. Pedaling a tri-cycle? Nada. So I relax and think- it’ll come. I keep offering opportunities but if he’s not interested I know there is no forcing it. 

For some reason, Forest has been interested in academic things. He seemed to easily learn his numbers, colors, shapes, and letters. 

He knew all of his letters before age 2  and all of their sounds by 2.25. By 2.5 he was beginning to recognize a few words and sound out a few straight forward ones. 

Is he a genius? Clearly. In the same way his friend Bryce is a genius because he could catch a ball by 15 months and his friend Eli was speaking in grammatically perfect sentences at his 2^nd birthday party and his friend Ryan taught himself to poop on the potty at 18 months with zero prompting. These kids all astonish me with their skill sets but I feel like across the board they have very diverse interests and it shows in their achievement of certain milestones. 

The baseball prodigy’s dad once assured me that if I worked with Forest I could teach him to catch a ball too. I assured him I could not. Over a year later and this still holds true. While Forest can physically catch a ball…he just won’t. He has absolutely no motivation. If I toss him a ball and say 'catch!', he just looks at me like I'm a total Philistine as it hits his chest and falls down.

His friend Eli rides a scooter as well as a 4 year old. He asks to ride his scooter all the time and practices nearly every day. Forest owns a scooter that collects dust in the garage. In his view, its only purpose is to be ridden down hills. Propelling it with his legs has no appeal to him. 

My point is this- in my defense, Forest has shown a remarkable interest in learning to read. It hasn’t been pulling teeth. I haven’t been strapping him to a chair and making him recite the alphabet backwards and forwards. It’s just come naturally and he continues to strive to learn more. 

My mom insists that if we were sports obsessed then Forest would be more interested in soccer/baseball/etc; that the reason he is so enamored with text is that he sees me reading all the time and we make room for storytime several times a day. Sometimes they simply imitate what their parents clearly value. 

I think there is definitely some truth to this. The point is, I am rolling with it. I totally love the play-based movement but I think there is room for structured academics in there too. Forest watches a show called Super Why in which the characters’ super power is the "power to read". I love that. It is a super power and my little boy seems to understand that and wants to unlock those skills asap. 

Anyhoos, Of course I think Forest is pretty special but I definitely don’t want it to come across that I think he’s particularly brilliant or anything. He certainly has friends more advanced than him in the pre-literacy department and friends much younger than him that are doing the same things he’s doing. He also has peers that are displaying non-academic skills that Forest is not even close to mastering (or even attempting). But I figured that since I’ve posted a few videos of him spelling/reading and people had asked me what sorts of teaching tools we use with Forest, I’d go ahead and give a list of our favorite resources and teaching tactics.   

First I will say that Tactile letters that they can manipulate is the best route. Simple letter puzzles, foam letters for the bathtub, letter magnets, etc are wonderful introductory toys in terms of the alphabet. 

Books are also your friend. The best alphabet books we’ve come across have been: 

1. Alphablock. This one is really the book that got Forest interested in letters. The cut out format is gorgeous and allows a tactile experience for each letter. It’s simple and eye catching and had Forest learning his letters in no time. 

2. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. This one is a great rhythmic story and I especially love it because the letters are all lower case. Why do we start with upper case letters when 99% of text is lower case? We made this mistake with Forest and it took much longer for him to master his 'little' letters.

3. B is for Bear by Roger Priddy. This simple rhyming, touchy-feely book is perfect for babies. It’s great for vocabulary as well as letters and from 12-24 months was a huge favorite for Forest. 

Shows: 

1) Leapfrog Letter Factory. You guys. This DVD is amazing. Its creative and captivating and introduces letters and their corresponding sounds in a very memorable and catchy way. After watching it 3 times (it’s a 30 minute video) Forest had mastered his letter sounds. Of course we were reinforcing this through our day to day activities but it certainly helped him pick the skill up more quickly. 

2) Super Why. I touched on this earlier but we love this show. Forest really started picking up letter recognition at about 19 months. A friend clued us into this show and it helped to reinforce his letter knowledge. 

3) Sesame Street. Sesame Street is good in many educational ways. I love that each episode focuses on a ‘Letter of the Day’ in an engaging way. 

General tactics for making letters and pre-reading fun: Start with their name and words labeling their favorite things. The first words Forest was able to “read” were Forest, Car, Cow, Disney, and Dog. We did lots of crafts with his name on them and would go over each letter and what sound it makes. 

 Every kid loves their own name! 

Once he had his letter sounds figured out we started showing him how to sound out basic, phonetically straight forward words. We started with his favorite thing: Cars. Once he felt like he could ‘read’ that word on his own he was hooked and would ask us to write other words for him. 

Transcribing in general is also a great teaching tool. Stand at the chalkboard or write on a sketchbook any word they say to you. It’s like magic for Forest and just gets him very engaged and interested in learning more. 

Point out text wherever you go. Stop signs, grocery stores, addresses, etc. Just draw attention their attention to it and try to get them interested. If they are at all into it, they will pick up letters pretty effortlessly this way. If not, relax, it'll come eventually!

Now I will say: I am quickly getting out of my league with teaching him to read. So far I’ve just been going on instinct but I feel like I’ve reached the point where I may actually need to do some research on the best way to formally teach a toddler to read. Beyond letters and their basics sounds, I’m out of ideas. Do you guys know of any resources or literature that might be helpful for this next level of literacy?