This post brought to you by the Letter G.

For the past couple of weeks, Miss K (almost 18 months), has been getting very interested in letters. She loves to watch Baby Shakespeare cause they sing the alphabet song in it (twice). At night before she goes to bed she loves to "draw" letters on the Magnadoodle. She'll make a scribble and then say something like "G" or "D." "O" is another favorite letter to say. As is "I" and "A." "G" is the one said most frequently and it definitely seems to be her favorite letter.

It's funny, in my journal about N, I didn't write down anything about letters till she was 22 months and then I wrote down how she said the alphabet, "Abcdefggggggjklmoooooooopstxz." Obviously she was interested in letters before she started saying the alphabet. I, apparently, failed to record when it started though. (I do know that when she was about 20 months old she knew what letters were because I remember a day when my Mom was in the hospital and we were watching the nurse write on a whiteboard and N started saying letters.) I remember that N also used to like watching them sing the ABC's on Baby Shakespeare. I'm pretty certain that N learned to sing the alphabet from watching that and from listening to Ernie and Bert sing the alphabet song on one of her Sesame Street CD's.

Anyway, from the way I wrote down how N said the alphabet, it appears that she liked "G" a lot too. Is your favorite letter early in life an inherited thing? I know there is something about the way you form the letters in your mouth that makes certain ones easier to say, but I can't find a reference to it right now. I spent an afternoon doing some web searches on language acquisition and alphabet learning but can't find a good reason for why my girls like(d) "G". I finally realized that when you say/sing the alphabet you kind of pause after "G". Perhaps they like(d) "G" because it is salient because of the pause? Maybe they like(d) "O" because it is kind of fun to say and it also seems to "stick out" when you say the alphabet.

I'm so glad to see K interested in the alphabet. She seems excited to see letters on pieces of paper and around on signs and things. Her dad and I spend a lot of time at keyboards in front of computers and she sees letters on the keyboards and the screens, so she knows letters are very important to us. She sees her dad reading the newspaper every morning at breakfast--again, seeing the importance of letters. N had mastered saying the alphabet correctly by 2 years of age. I, of course, was pleased and proud. She mastered recognizing upper and lower case letters shortly there after.

Right about the time N was turning 2, and was becoming an alphabet singing champion, I was doing some interviews with teachers for a project. One of the teachers at one of the underachieving schools told me about how many of her first graders didn't know the alphabet. I was shocked. Since I had a 2 year old who knew the alphabet, it seemed impossible to me. I know that kids learn about things that are important to their parents, and what is available to them in their environment, but it seems impossible that the alphabet wouldn't be somewhere in their homes or on TV. It seems impossible, but it's not.

It is so sad to me that there are children who don't know the alphabet by first grade. It seems like at that point they are so far behind in so many fronts. When I think of how many hours N has already had with letters and words and thinking about the concepts that go along with letters, reading, and words, it seems like a first grader who doesn't know their alphabet could ever catch up.

So what's the point to all this... I'm not sure. I guess I just hope that programs like Head Start never go away. Perhaps the point of this post was for me to do a web search about Head Start and find this. I think I'll make a contribution to them before the year is over.