Glitter and Goldfish…

August 12, 2009 at 12:46 am (craftiness n' colors, learning fun, status report)

“School’s a weird thing. I’m not sure it works.”

– Johnny Depp

Time for another update on Teagle Academy!

Within the past 2 weeks Puff has gotten all the way through to the letter H! Lets all give her a huge round of applause, shall we?

Very good.

We’re all very proud over here in Toddlerville. Because you know, the alphabet is tricksy. Its sneaky. . .it lies to you. Just when you think you’ve got the suckers pinned down, they go changing their rules again. 26 letters ain’t no joke. Then you have to add in the lowercase, which brings us to 52. . .And why do they have to play rhyming games all of the time, anyway? The cool letters form little cliques, and exclude everyone else. Its pretty difficult to keep letters like B, C, D, E, G, P, T, V, & Z apart, for one so young as 2. You must also keep in mind that some of the little devils like to go out in disguise, like the lowercase letter a, who likes to sport a top-hat when seen in public. Don’t even get me started on appropriate sounds, these little guys like to rack up points in that department, some sport 2 or even 3, while others have only one. I think the alphabet is starting a rock band. Lord knows they’re moody enough. . .sometimes they don’t even say anything at all!

But I must give the lady props for trying. She’s really doing very well. We’ve gotten through to the letter I, and I think she’s understanding. I’m downplaying the letter sounds right now, my goal is to get her to recognize the letters capital and lowercase, for what they are. THEN we’ll start on sounds in earnest. Because it IS confusing. I’m confused… and when she says things like “C says cuh like Teaball!” it becomes a bit convoluted, as she hasn’t yet learned the letter T for easy correction.

Though I do feel that she is gaining some level of understanding, it can still be a bit difficult to pin down what and how much she retains. She is only 2, after all, and as anyone who owns a 2-year old knows, they are often contrary and will refuse to tell you what you wish to hear only because they don’t want to give you the satisfaction. Sometimes when I ask her what a letter is, she nails it. Sometimes, she ignores me. . .and still other times she babbles incoherently in my general direction – her way of telling me to bug off. Oddly enough, when I flip the tables, and phrase the question in such a way that I’m the one saying the letter (What did we turn the letter C into?), she always gets it right. This leads me to believe that she has gained some mastery of what we’ve studied thus far, whether she admits to it or not. Her favorite way to show off her new-found letter knowledge is to point them out in our books during story time. Even if she gains NO knowledge from these elementary forays into the world of education, I do know she’s having fun. And I’m down with that.

Whatever she’s actually learning, I can say for certain sure that T is loving school time, and aside from the actual letter craft we’ve been doing loads of fun letter-related things. I won’t list them all, but for example: we watched D-D-D-D-D-Dora the Explorer on D-day, along with doing a lot of disco dancing with the dogs while wearing polka-dotted dresses, and dug in the dirt with our dinosaurs. Great songs for the letter D included 6 Little Ducks and Do you know the doughnut man (okay, its the muffin man, but we got creative!). We read the books Dizzy Dragon, Daddy Hugs, and No more Diapers for Ducky. . .among many others. We’ve recycled and re-used our B-box for several of these letters, she loves that game!