I had high and lofty goals for teaching Z his alphabet this year, and it’s been going great. I will say though that my previous post about the structured classroom setting with stickers and charts has slowly fallen to the wayside. Thus the reason I am not shy about the fact that I don’t feel called to homeschool.

Still, despite all of that Z has learned all of his colors. Well, not all the colors, but the ones that should be expected from men (according to this illustration).

And I am very happy to announce that he knows all of the letters and their sounds. Not just in order or through song, but by recognition. I can take credit for about 6 of those letters, but the rest he learned when I borrowed The Letter Factor from my friend who told me this educational Leap Frog DVD taught her daughter all the letters in just 2 weeks. I experienced the same results with Z and he loves it. The way they teach the letters by associating them with a sound that a child would already recognize is genius! For example the H’s are all panting because they are H H H Hot. Or Z’s favorite is the letter W because he raps like a skipping record W W W W What’s happening dude? So all of the sounds are easy for children to identify with. When I taught Z that the letter a says “aaa” I left it at that, but in the video all of the letter A’s are scared so they scream “AAAAH”. It just makes sense, and it works. I recommend this video to anyone with little ones wanting to learn the alphabet. In fact I need to go buy a copy myself so that I can give the one I have back to my friend!