1st Words

First of all, let me say that this is not a story book. It is more like a sturdy workbook or puzzle book that your 3 to 5 year old child will enjoy working together with you on, over and over again. Each page has a cute illustration and a sentence that describes it, i.e. "The cat is playing with the ball." Somewhere on the page, one word has been picked out and the lower case letters are outlined (in the example above it is the word "cat") so that they can be matched up with the corresponding magnets. It's the parent's job to help the early pre-reader figure out which word is highlighted. "Hmmm... I wonder what word from the sentence that is. Do you recognize any of these letters? Oh, yes, that is a 'c'. Good job! Do you know what sound a 'c' makes? Let's see if we can find the 'c' magnet. Is this it? Oh, it doesn't look quite the same, does it. This one is an 'e'. Do you think it's going to be the word 'ball'? Oh, no, I guess not, that wouldn't start with a 'c' would it..." etc. etc. My 3 year old son is so excited about the one-on-one attention and the fact that the magnetic letters stick to the pages, he doesn't care if he knows all the letters. But every day this past month, before he naps and goes to bed, he wants to "read the letter book." I can't express how amazed I am by the speed at which he has learned his lower case letters since his fascination with this book began. We were given this as a gift and apparently got the timing wrong the first time we presented it to my daughter. She was around two at the time and didn't seem too interested. I did all the picking out of the letters. Maybe I was frustrated because she wanted it "read" to her, and it's not really a story book. I also remember being frustrated because you have to reuse letters, but now I realize what a great teaching tool that is. They do at least give you two 'o's. So the book hung out on the bookshelf until we were straightening up and my son found it. I moaned quietly. Keeping up with the letters drove me nuts when my daughter was young, and the text is, well, a little boring. (Hence the four stars instead of five.) But my son was fascinated by the letter magnets that stick to the pages. So give it some time, and let your child play with it. I keep all their books accessible to them. While many suffer from this, this book has held up well (other than a few missing letters.) What I think makes this book work, is that while they can learn a lot from this book, they learn a lot more because they think they're playing. The first few times refrain from "teaching" and just work on matching shapes, I mean letters. Have you ever thought about how amazing it is that we can teach children to read when every font can look so different? Just manipulating, searching for, and matching the letters will help them get them all straight. Stretch out on a soft rug or the bed with them and play along. That'll give you room to lay out all the letter