Originally Posted by Mk13
Originally Posted by aquinas
Sorry folks, I'm pushing my monthly quota, I know. There must be something in our water these days...

At dinner last night, DS (17mo) started singing the alphabet song spontaneously mid-bite. The funny thing is he's only ever heard the letter names about 4 times at his music class when we sing the alphabet song as part of a large repertoire. I've been actively trying to avoid letter names otherwise so he can learn phonics later. After a bit of investigation, I discovered he can visually identify the alphabet by letter name and phonics. That's news to me.

Now I wonder how long he's known the alphabet. Apparently I have a stealthy observer who ferrets away new knowledge and masters it internally before springing it on his unsuspecting parents. I guess I should be especially mindful of my Ps and Qs now...

nice! smile ... just wondering, why would you want to avoid the letters in order to learn phonics later??? DS3 started to be really interested in alphabet around 15-18 months. He would bring me these plastic letters, stick them in my face and wait for me to say the sound (the first letter he learned was W and it remains his favorite to this day). And since this game got boring for ME I started telling him "whatever letter" makes the "whatever sound". He knew the alphabet by about 20 months and most phonetic sounds and had all the upper and lower case letters and the sounds down perfect by the time he was about 22-23 months old. All it took was this little game and watching Leapfrog videos. At 2 years and 4 months he started spontaneously phonetically read words. FUN times smile
Fair question! smile

I read spontaneously when I was 2 and my parents had stuck with phonetic letters when I asked for "decoding". I figured the approach had facilitated early reading because it avoided confusion over distinguishing between two sets of labels. My thinking was that using the same approach would allow my son to just jump from phonetics to sounding out the words on his own when he was ready.

Apparently that was all moot, since the method doesn't seem to be the causative factor.

We have some magnetic letters, too, but he's never shown an interest in them, other than as debris when he plays with his construction vehicles. Maybe they were purchased after he knew the alphabet already...? (Or, maybe, in my refusal to use the letter names, he thought I was illiterate! Ha!)

What is to give light must endure burning.