Maybe it isn't so scary after all....

I have said it before, and I will say it again - teaching my children how to read scares me! I have this fear that I will totally mess it up and not know what to do or say that will cause the "light bulb moment" to happen. But, wouldn't you know, in the midst of all this worry, my girls have been learning!

I knew before this week that Jordan (who turned 3 on Thanksgiving) knew all of her letters by sight and most of the sounds, but they didn't exactly just flow off the tongue (she had to think about them and did have mistakes). And I thought that Cali (who will be 2 next month) knew a few of the letters by sight, but they just AMAZED me today!


I had read on several blogs by fellow homeschool preschool mommies that Letter Factory by Leap Frog was the bomb and after having it recommended to me again this past weekend, we decided to get it. We started watching it on Saturday evening, watched it yesterday, and watched it again on the way to the grocery store (gotta love built in DVD players! How did people go anywhere with kids before?!?). When we got home, we went outside to play and as they were swinging, Jordan just started rattling off EVERY SINGLE letter sound, as quickly as if she were singing her ABC's! Cali even started jumping in to say "B says buh" and things like that!


It started to rain, so we came in and played with a game that I made earlier that afternoon. I LOVE Jamin's blog and I recently read about her game, ABC Stomp, that she created to help her children learn their letters and sounds. My girls LOVE it! Basically, I took Cali's shoe and traced it on a piece of felt. I then cut out 26 pieces. I wrote a letter of the alphabet on each, writing both the capital and lower case letter. I then laid them on the floor and called out "Jump on the letter that says 'duh'" and Jordan jumped on the letter "D". I would call out the sounds or the letters themselves, and she would jump to whatever I called out. She calls it 'Hopscotch' and loves jumping from letter to letter! She has such a look of excitement and triumph when she jumps on the correct letter and knows it. Cali can play as well, although she can't quite keep up with Jordan... but she loves when you hold up each one and ask her what letter it is. Again, she isn't even 2 yet (ok, she will be next week BUT STILL!!!) and she recognized every letter, even out of order, and could say a lot of the sounds they made.

We then had fun saying different words and guessing the letter the word starts with, like "ta-ta-tickle" and tickling each other while saying "T" or "ha-ha-hug" and all saying "H". Daddy was home for a lot of this, so it made for really good quality family time!

I apologize for all of the Exclamation Points, but this was one of those GOOD DAYS, ya know? When you feel like maybe you can do this after all, and maybe you can actually have A LOT of FUN while doing it! I am so glad to have this blog now to journal days like this. Tomorrow, it is back to learning about Cows, which is also going really well -- we are loving Click Clack Moo, but more on that later.....

WOO HOO!