Letter lesson

Waldorf, for some reason, is not hot on written language and letters for preschoolers. I understand not pushing this, since there is plenty of time to develop the skills, but I don't understand the idea of denying an interested child the chance to explore what makes him curious.

Starboy definitely is expressing an interest in cracking the code on written words. "What does that say?" he pleads daily. Although my own recollection is of learning to read whole words before learning  each letter and its sound, I would have to think that I was given "sound-it-out" guidance as we went along in each story, based on how I've seen my mother read with Starboy.

So we've started some letter and sound recognition activities. With no method or plan to make it much easier for him. Luckily I'm not a strict Montessorian. Although that might help him, in terms of strategy.

We've started a multi-day project of making place cards for our family easter gathering (14 people). I found some blank cards for $1 per pack (12/pack), and got some matching glitter stickers ($3-4 per pack, you'll need more than one for a big crowd).

The bummer is that the stickers are all crammed together on the sheet, which makes finding the letter you want pretty confusing for a pre-reader. I did cut off the numbers entirely. And I encouraged him to set the stickers on a blank sheet during the hunting part, so he could see beyond the floral tablecloth. I considered cutting apart each letter, but then we'd have 26 pieces to manage, and that didn't seem conducive to success.

Some of the family names were pretty long (3 syllables) to fit onto the place card, and so I took those on while Starboy worked. He seemed to get maxed out after about three name cards, even with an additional incentive of using lenticular robot stickers for some of the names.

*This post has been shared at these linky parties. Please check them out for literally hundreds of great crafting ideas! The Magic Onions, Natural Suburbia, Frontier Dreams, Montessori Monday.