it's all about letters right now

[amphipodgirl]

The girls are suddenly interested in what letter various words start with.  They're unclear on the details -- the are more likely to ask "what number goes wif penguin" than "what letter does penguin start with" (or "wif"), but I'm confident that they're asking about identifying what the beginning sounds of words are, which words have the same

Comments

[aelfie]

That's actually really, really good! Since our written language is (mostly) based on sounds. (i.e. the letter represent a particular sound)

Its supposed to be a lot easier to teach them to read if you teach the sounds of the letters first.

[ross_teneyck]

I suppose they might as well find out about the cruel joke that is English spelling sooner rather than later...

[aelfie]

true! But this is a hint that the girls probably need to be taught to read phonetically, rather than by sight. Ike got totally screwed up with his kindy year where they were teaching the children to read by sight. Its taken almost this entire academic year to straighten it out. (and lets not even get into the discussion about the appropriateness of teaching Kindergarteners how to read.)

[minimo]

If you think about development, it makes sense that audial parsing of language starts at birth, but written language is far more a construct of civilization. It would make sense that the visual part of language learning would come later for most kinds.
Everyone is different, but my experience goes along with that. I remember memorizing Golden Books as a toddler from being read to, and then my brother showed me which word was which when I asked him to. My feeling would be to go with the flow of what the girls are asking you, and don't bother with anything that they are not expressing interest in. Their learning style may be different than yours was.

Art and music play important parts in brain development, and now schools are trying to cut them because they think they're cutting the fat. I think that more and more, schools are trying to leapfrog over developmental steps, creating stressed out children. Moms have to work at not being dragged along, as though school was some kind of competition, even preschool!