Yesterday was Svea's 19 month birthday. I'll work on having her answer "1.58," when people ask her how old she is.
She was almost finished with breakfast. All happy and strapped in and sitting high above the table and eating what was left of the apple and drinking water out of a yogurt container, I thought it was a perfect time to play with letters.
I grabbed a stack of light blue index cards cut in half and a blue sharpie. (I knew to make sure the pen wouldn't bleed through the paper. Svea plays with some letters I made her that also teaches her the 'this pen is too strong for this paper' backwards version of every letter. Poor girl; confusing.) I sat down at the kitchen table and scooted her back slightly, so she had a good view of everything. She consistently knows all of the capital letters, and is just starting to understand that two different things are the same letter. I've been referring to letters around her world as 'uppercase' and 'lowercase,' but she needed this. (Sitting here writing this, I think, should I be calling the capitals 'capital' instead of 'uppercase.')
Naturally, I started with A, then asked her which letter that was. She, of course, knew that already; then next to the A I wrote a little a, and asked her which letter that was. C was the first easy one, the uppercase and lowercase look the same. Other than c, e was the first lowercase she got right. I helped her by singing the alphabet song. "A B C D E F...," then I'd show her the written G, "Geee!" As I made each card, Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Ee..., I lined them up in a long strip on the table. At the beginning of the alphabet, when I'd ask her what the lowercase letter was, she'd guess some random letter. But by letter Ll, she started to understand what was going on, and the lowercase letter has the same name as the uppercase version, and she started getting them all right. I sang the alphabet each new letter, and I discovered that Svea can sing the alphabet up to letter K, and when I sang the alphabet to V, she chimed in "X Y Z." After half way through the alphabet, Svea wanted to touch the letters, but I wouldn't let her until we had finished the whole alphabet, and the letters were laid in three rows on the table. After I cleaned her sticky breakfast hands, I set her down in a chair at the table. She picked up letters, I asked her what the letter was. She just moved letters around and we talked about letters.
She was almost finished with breakfast. All happy and strapped in and sitting high above the table and eating what was left of the apple and drinking water out of a yogurt container, I thought it was a perfect time to play with letters.
I grabbed a stack of light blue index cards cut in half and a blue sharpie. (I knew to make sure the pen wouldn't bleed through the paper. Svea plays with some letters I made her that also teaches her the 'this pen is too strong for this paper' backwards version of every letter. Poor girl; confusing.) I sat down at the kitchen table and scooted her back slightly, so she had a good view of everything. She consistently knows all of the capital letters, and is just starting to understand that two different things are the same letter. I've been referring to letters around her world as 'uppercase' and 'lowercase,' but she needed this. (Sitting here writing this, I think, should I be calling the capitals 'capital' instead of 'uppercase.')
Naturally, I started with A, then asked her which letter that was. She, of course, knew that already; then next to the A I wrote a little a, and asked her which letter that was. C was the first easy one, the uppercase and lowercase look the same. Other than c, e was the first lowercase she got right. I helped her by singing the alphabet song. "A B C D E F...," then I'd show her the written G, "Geee!" As I made each card, Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Ee..., I lined them up in a long strip on the table. At the beginning of the alphabet, when I'd ask her what the lowercase letter was, she'd guess some random letter. But by letter Ll, she started to understand what was going on, and the lowercase letter has the same name as the uppercase version, and she started getting them all right. I sang the alphabet each new letter, and I discovered that Svea can sing the alphabet up to letter K, and when I sang the alphabet to V, she chimed in "X Y Z." After half way through the alphabet, Svea wanted to touch the letters, but I wouldn't let her until we had finished the whole alphabet, and the letters were laid in three rows on the table. After I cleaned her sticky breakfast hands, I set her down in a chair at the table. She picked up letters, I asked her what the letter was. She just moved letters around and we talked about letters.
She wanted more. She wanted me to write more letters and make more cards. Instead, I gave her a pen and paper. She wrote a little on the separate sheet of paper, but she wanted to write on the cards I had made. I thought she would want to write over the letters I had written, because we have done that before, but she wanted to write on the blank side. She'd grab a letter card off the table, and turn it over to write on it. I'd pick it up, ask her what letter that was, then suggest she write that letter on the blank side. And so she did. After showing her the letter, she'd turn the card over and say, "Write E," or "Write V," or whatever letter it was. Her writing was very purposeful, she wasn't scribbling. I never touched the pen. We did that all the way through about 12 random letters, until Svea said, "Finished." She hopped off her chair, ran to her room, then ran right back, and got back up on the chair. She wanted to take the letters off the table, but I wouldn't let her. She decided her freedom was more important, so I had her put all the letters away into a ziplock bag.
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