Friday, April 13, 2012

Learning Letters

A quick idea for a Friday -- Learning Letters!
We've been working on letters with Neven forever - Just casually, but we've been at a plateau for a while now. He recognizes them all and knows what most of them sound like, but how to make the jump to writing them (somehow, writing the letter "A" 10 times in a row in his preschool book wasn't keeping his attention!) and making the jump to know that letters in a row make words? 


Here's what we've been doing, with great success: 
1. Pick a magnet. We have a container of 60 basic magnet shapes things like a cat, dog, goat, tree... We make a game of it, but having Neven close his eyes and reach into the container. Not exactly sure why, but this makes it WAY more fun for him! 
2. Use the magnet to hang sheet of white paper on the fridge. 
3. Spell the word using magnetic letters. While I'm searching for the letters, Neven and I talk about what letters/sounds are in the word - sometimes we skip the vowels, since those are confusing (for example, the OA in "goat"), and just try to figure out the first and last letters. 
4. Next up - We pick a marker and write the letters to make the word.








Will you try this? Let me know -- I've been missing feedback in the past few posts!!