Letter Love

Oliver learned all of his capital letters by his second birthday. I started teaching him letters one at a time. I started with the letter "O," because I thought it looked simple to recognize. Then, I chose "I" because it looked so different from "O." I mostly used magnetic letters to teach him. Once he recognized some letters, I took a friend's advice and started to point them out at signs and boxes at stores. It took nearly a year to teach him all 26 letters.

                                                                                            

Some of his letter learning took a back seat after Jo was born. I still kept up with what he already learned so he wouldn't forget, and I familiarized him with the lower-case letters. I can't say he could recognize all his "little letters," but he knows most of them.

When we're hanging out, I sometimes mention what letter a word starts with. Like, when we're playing catch together (with a big ball), I might say, "Ball begins with B. B says, 'buh, buh, buh, ball.'"

Sometimes, I just pick a letter and tell him all the words I can think of that begin with that letter. I say, "What begins with B? Let's see. B says, 'buh.' Ball. Bear. Boy. Back. Butt. Bumble Bee."

Oliver has started telling me what words begin with a letter now. It still takes me by surprise! Last week, I asked him, "What begins with B? Bear!"

He yelled, "Bath!"

Holy cow! I was so excited. I'm not going to lie; I gave him a cookie.

This morning, he walked around the kitchen with his magnetic letter, "P." He came up to me and said, "P is for pan." It was 7am, but I still gave him a cookie. I gave him lots of praise, too, of course! I even took him upstairs to tell Andrew what he said. Oliver was so proud. Then he took a big bite out of his cookie, just like Cookie Monster, so that it looked like a C. He held it up to me and said, "C is for cookie!" Haha.

Speaking of Cookie Monster, I realized I never posted a video I took of Oliver last week. What's the point of being a mom if you can't embarrass your kids every once in a while? Here's my hilarious little man acting out and singing to the "C is for Cookie" video on the Sesame Street channel on Youtube. That plastic circle is actually a piece to his toy cookie jar, so he pretends it's a cookie: