I know I have told you many times about what a difficult infant my daughter was. From the moment she was born, she gave me a run for my money. She cried all the time, all the time. I remember my first day with her in the hospital, when she first started and did not seem to stop. In a panic I started singing the first song that came to mind, the ABC song. It miraculously quieted her cries as she stared up at me taking in my song as I named off each letter. She listened so intently, her eyes fixed on my mouth as I sang. This became my go to song to soothe my daughter.
Now here it is 2 1/2 years later & it is still a favorite. Mai sings her ABC’s all the time. Many mornings we are awaken by the sounds of her sweet voice reciting her alphabet. We have been working on sounding out our letters for quite some time now. We do many activities and lessons to practice. At random, I will start pointing out objects and sounding them out for her. “Look Mai, hat. “H” hhhhhhhh. “A” aaaaaaaaaaaa. “T” ttttttttt, hat” We read, work on her ABC puzzles & she watches me write the letters out on her chalkboard.
One of my daughter’s favorite phonics games to play is a simple one. We like to have living room picnics, so we usually lay down a blanket and sit on the floor. We use her ABC magnets & put them in a pile on the floor. We grab them one by one and Mai will tell me the letter and a word that the letter begins with. As you can see from her video, she is very enthusiastic about this game. She is very proud when she gets them all and so is mommy. Sometimes it is the simplest of things that have the greatest effect. What is wonderful is we play this often and she comes out with new words each time. Sometimes she even says some that mommy doesn’t know. The other day, she told me “Q” was for quoll. I had to ask her a couple of times to repeat it. “Are you saying quoll?” “Yes, the quoll is sooooooo cute.” I had to Google it. A quoll is a little animal that kind of looks like a mouse. She was right they are pretty cute. I discovered later that one of her ABC Mouse activities featured a quoll. My little smarty is already smarter than mommy.
