Acquiring the Alphabet

Letters

O caught wind of some alphabet stickers that had been stashed and she was immediately interested.

She went about some serious and busy work 'writing words'.

I stayed out of her serious work and didn't offer help until asked. 

It is interesting to observe how she makes sense of letters. She can recognize and write an O, since that is such an important letter and she is aware it starts her name. She believes "M" must begin the name of our friend Emy. She believes that a capital "I" is actually a dog bone;)

Eventually, she asked if I would spell her name in stickers. 

So I did, but I still didn't say anything. 

I was interested in paying attention to what she was getting out of this child's play (work).

Then she quickly got back to her spelling efforts and insisted that her letters should "look like a straight line" so she could read them better;)

EXPAND ON LETTER RECOGNITION

John Holt 'Serious Adult Work'. In the work of John Holt, he insists that children learn without directed teaching. He also writes about how children love to do useful work and copy what they see adults doing. He suggests adults involve their children in day-to-day work, for example, of finances (math), cooking (reading, math, science)...since everything is an opportunity to learn and even more so, to be involved in the serious work of adults. 

O see's me on the computer typing daily. 

She often takes folders/books and insists they are her computer, and madly 'types' away.

Yesterday, she asked if she could use the real computer to write a message. I never thought to ask her if she was interested in using our family computer. Great idea!

I set her up on Microsoft Word and let her be. I only arranged the settings so the font would be extra large and pop up on the screen so she could really get a feel for producing a message.

She played for an hour, typing madly and randomly clicking the mouse, as she see's us do. 

She dictated aloud as she wrote her own messages to the people she love's.

She pretended to buy things (as she also see's us do!) like new clothes, but clicking the mouse so window's pop up.

Letter Access: Scrabble