they really are smarter than we think...

Now that Riley has learned his alphabet, we're beginning to show him simple 2-4 letter words and how to sound them out:

Stop
Go
Hot Dog
Moon
Car
Bat

You get the picture. We do this on his chalkboard, with his puzzle pieces or his playmat letters. I haven't been too certain of how much he was really grasping yet. But we're trying to show him that by putting letters together it represents something that's meaningful to him.

Well, last night we're sitting on the couch watching Cars when he jumped off and started playing with his alphabet puzzle. Before this we had been playing on his alpha playmat and I had been showing him how he could put different letters in front of the "at" sound to create words -- "Bat", "Cat", "Hat" ect... so maybe word-building was on his mind.

Anyway, he comes over to me with an O and declared "O!", to which I replied, "You're right, that is an O! Can you find another letter to put with the O?". I figured he'd bring some random letter over and I'd try and sound them together for him. I really wasn't expecting him to be deliberate in his letter choice.

Well, as kids often do, he surprised me by bringing over a G and proudly said "GO!"! So my Little Sponge is taking it in, after all. I guess it's time we get him his Fridge Word Builder that's been sitting on his Amazon wishlist for awhile.

I'm so proud of my little budding wordsmith!


Shelby