On: the joys of learning to read

Starboy is checking out his kids' meal at the San Diego Zoo. The mac and cheese came with several bags of not-great, but not-too-terrible, over-processed snacky things. (Including already-sliced apples with a sell-by date at least a week away. Yech.)

"What are these, Mama?" he asks, holding up a very kid-friendly black package.

"What do you think they are?"

"I think they are animal cookies!" Big smile.

"Why do you think they are animal cookies?"

"Well," he reasons. "The picture is animals, and I see here a /k/ for 'cookies.'" He points to the "c" at the beginning of the word.

We're doomed.

Reading tent

 I'm just smitten with all of the ideas for play tents that are going around. I made one last fall for Starboy's fairy party (then forgot to photograph it), with the purpose of bringing it inside for reading. But there's a dresser and a mountain of outgrown clothes in that back corner, that I haven't been able to resolve. Long story for another day.

 But Starboy requested a "fort coming down from the ceiling," and I've been under the weather for a few days so he's been feeling a little neglected. So: The fort goes in front of the dresser and the mountain of outgrown clothes. And the Beatrix Potter festival begins.

Butterfly fairies flutter around inside. You know you want a tent like this.

Letter recognition

Starboy is still letter crazy, even though he guesses that nearly all of them sound like /n/. I hope the madness lasts, we've got a long way to go.

I'd given him a paperclip to use as a tool for poking extraneous pieces out of foam stickers, and he bent it into a W, an M, an E. When he saw all the possibilities and wanted more paperclips to make other letters (while he threatened to scratch up my antique desk with the W), I pulled out the pipe cleaners.

I cut them into straight and curved lengths that would fit into the grooves of the Montessori letter tiles. Big hit! The added bonus is he has to focus on differentiating between the lengths of each piece, which vary from capital to small (and vary by letter, e.g. the crossbar in A).

The trimmed pipe cleaner pieces are currently being stored in a half-egg-carton, so he can sort as he uses them as well. Unfortunately I don't have Montessori "shelves," as there isn't really space for them.

I also don't have a strategy for attacking all of the letters. It's clear he's still trying to understand the differences between the "name" of the letter and the "sound" of it, between capital and small, and between cursive and print. I'd prefer to focus only on cursive, but there is very little supportive cursive script to offer additional teaching in our computerized world. So the approach so far has been haphazard. I'm surprised he's able to remember any of it.

I'm going to have to do some research to offer a proper strategy.

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.

Indestructible alphabet flash cards

I'm so excited to try these gorgeous alphabet cards by Marie-Claire Camp on Kickstarter. Aren't they gorgeous? Her initial project sold out, so I've pre-ordered on the second run.

They are basically flash cards made out of food-safe credit cards, with beautiful graphic design. This photo doesn't show it, but they will have both cursive and print letters on the face. Starboy is going to love them!

From the mind of a toddler

Here are some things I discovered while Starboy was playing on his own.

Starboy loves the little plastic tiles from the Rummikub game. It looks like he discovered that they are the same width as the notches in the playmat.

Starboy is into matching lately. I noticed he ransacked the Velveteen Rabbit story bag, and matched up the characters with the picture on the endsheet of the book.

Ummm...? It turns out the Squinkies bubbles fit exactly on the cabinet knobs.

 Lego crane transporter with ramp.

Zoo animal transporter. Vehicles figure prominently on a daily basis.