writing letters

During Mommy School everyday I write Andrew a letter. Today's letter said:

June 10, 2009
Dear Andrew Rice,
Do you like train stickers or stop sign stickers?
Love, Mommy

So, these little letters have taught Andrew lots of concepts about print. He's learned what his first, middle and last name look like. He knows a lot of small words (do, you, like, love, etc.). It's also improved his speech. Really looking at language and the way we talk has helped Andrew use language better. He now uses articles and prepositions in his speech when last summer he would skip those kinds of words. And he might have added those types of words to language by now anyway, but I can't help but think our daily study of his letter has really helped.

So in the last few months, the daily letter has included a question. I used to write his answers to the questions with his help. I would say the word slowly and record the letters he heard. Or if we were writing a word that was already in the letter, we would find that word and copy it. But one day, he wanted to pick up the pencil. So he would write a crazy hodge-podge-ery of letters and lines and whatnot on a paper next to me while I wrote out the answer to his question. We'd still talk it through like we did before with our sounding out's and our word hunts, but this time he'd be writing things to.

Now he writes the whole answer. I make one line for each word on his paper and we talk it out the way we did before, but his hodge-podge-ery is more organized. Legible, even. Go figure.

But then, that wasn't enough. Now he talks out a story of the letters as he writes. Sometimes he'll make a letter laying down and tell me that that letter fell down! Then, he'll draw arms on another letter so that letter can help the fallen letter. He includes faces and shows which letters were happy and which were sad.

This was today's letter story.

As he wrote his name:
"It's D's birthday! Letter R and letter E are coming to the party! And so is letter W!"

As he writes "likes":
"Letter L is in his home. Oh! Letter I knocked on the door! He wants to come inside!" Andrew accidentally writes a C instead of an E "Letter c! What are you doing here? Letter C wanted to come." I erase C. "Letter E is knocking on the door now!"

And as he writes "stickers":
"Letter R wants to play with a ball! Here is a ball for letter R. And letter S wants to play with him! They are playing ball together! Letter R is happy."

I wonder what his teachers will think...



This is the letter. He wrote "Andrew likes stop sign stickers."