I have been a very busy bee indeed attempting to teach Thomas the alphabet (sadly we don't have Sesame Street to provide that service here!) with the Letterland method. Letterland is a most lovely place (in case you didn't know) where all the Letterlanders live in scenes where everything begins with their letter. They don't get lonely though (worry not!) because all the other Letterlanders freely come to visit. To the left you'll notice Clever Cat and Bouncy Ben. My personal favourites are Harry Hat Man and Yellow Yo-Yo Man, but that's just me! He took to it really quickly and can identify the letters now without their characters.
Letterland has a phonetics approach so he's learning the sounds that each of these characters make. Bouncy Ben's sound is 'buh' for example not 'bee' this helps them learn to read later on by piecing the letter sounds together. Easy, right?
All would be well if it wasn't for the troublesome characters Eddy Elephant, Clever Cat, and Dippy Duck. Without fail when I ask what their sounds are I get a miaow, a quack and an elephant noise (no clue whatsoever how to type that!). He won't have it any other way no matter how much I insist or try to explain otherwise. The dear boy looks at me like I need institutionalising when I attempt to explain that although ducks do quack Dippy Duck just says 'duh'.
So for the next year we'll be working on this so he doesn't start school thinking quack, miaow and elephant noise are legitimate alphabet sounds, or else we'll both just look a bit crazy!
