Little Jimmy is 2 years old and one month. He has not been showing much interest in talking or saying words, but he has known what words mean and he has been able to take direction very well for a long time. Last week he FINALLY started making sounds like he is trying to sound out words. Up until then he very rarely tried to say anything other than "Mama," "Dada," "yeah," "no," and a couple other almost words. He does know many animal noises though! That's my little nature boy ;-) Anyway, last week I stumbled upon this neat website in my search for toddler activities. It is Starfall.com. Maybe you have heard of it. I clicked on the first big button that says ABC's and started going through the alphabet. It is very cute!
Each letter shows the capital and lowercase version at the beginning and then you click an arrow and it makes the letter sound such as "ah" for A and "buh" for b and so on...you get to the next page and you click the highlighted letter and it sounds out the word that is shown. Then there is a cute little animation. After a couple words, there is usually some sort of game, I think mostly matching types. You have to use a mouse for the games, and since Jimmy hasn't quite figured out how to control the mouse very well, I do it for him. For one of the games, either a capital or lowercase letter will pop up and you have to click and drag it to either the matching capital or lowercase letter on either side of the screen. Jimmy caught on very quickly - I click and drag I ask him "Does this letter go here?" holding it over either the capital or lowercase letter and he tells me yes or no.
As we were going through the letters he amazed me by actually making sounds along with the sounds on the computer! He has made so much progress in the last couple days I just can't believe it! He loves to go through the letters on the website but he is also now carrying around his flashcards (which he previously only cared about for the pictures) and he points to the words trying to sound out the beginning letter.
This week I am going to start focusing on a letter a week until we make it through the alphabet. If we miss a week, we will move that letter to the next week. I am not sure how this will work out once the new baby comes, but we will work it out somehow, even if this project has to get put on hold for a bit at that point. Since it is a new month, I feel like we are making a clean start. And since March starts on a Monday, that works out great! We are starting with the letter A today. I haven't quite worked out how we are going to do this, but I plan to go over the letter on Starfall.com every day, find books and songs to correspond and do crafts featuring the Letter of the Week. I am going to be using the No Time for Flashcards blog to help me out because there are awesome crafts and ideas for each letter of the alphabet showcased there. I will post about what we do as often as I can and will post pics of the crafts we do along with a link to the project on No Time for Flashcards if I use one of those for guidance.
Wish us luck and pray for me that I can follow through with this! I am so tired of not having a "plan" for Jimmy, we have just been gliding along each day doing nothing in particular. I have felt so lost up until now. Maybe if there is someone out there feeling as lost as I have been I can help them out along the way through this adventure!
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6 comments:
good luck! I'm sure before you know it he'll be well on his way to speaking and you won't be able to hush him up! :)
That sounds like a really good plan! Anything that keeps his interest in learning...I say go for it! good luck!
Good luck and have fun! Starfall is a wonderful site!!!
many prayers and lots of luck.. i know you guys can do this!!
i hear that boys are so much slower than girls in development regarding vocalizing and reading, etc. great idea! funny, i liked that march 1 began on a monday. with my seasonal affective disorder, it seemed that march 1 was a good day to start some new things for me too!
Great idea! We are planning to start doing something more formal like a letter a week this fall, for now I just make a list at the beginning of the week of a few activities I'd like to do & cross them off as we go. :) If they don't get done, they start next week's list. :) Thanks for the sweet comment on my blog! I know, this stage is super hard, especially if your little guy isn't that communicative, I imagine that makes it harder!
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