Alphabet, Sounds, and Shapes Update

I'm pretty sure I didn't do a 21 month post, nor did I do a 22 month post... I'm not even going to bother doing those right now.  But I wanted to do an alphabet update, because that's one of the main developmental things that has gone on in the past couple of months.

My last alphabet update was when Noah was 21 months old, and he knew all of his letters.  All 26 letters of the alphabet, without any prompting.  He knew all the capitals, and about half of the lower-case letters.

By the time he turned 22 months old he knew all of the lower case letters, along with all the uppercase letters.  BUT, by 22 months he also knew ALL of the letter sounds.  All of them.

He can also build many of the letters out of duplo.  A month ago, after we bought the duplo (we just had mega bloks before), Justin made an E and showed it to Noah.  After that Noah wanted us to make all the letters (and after we made them he would take them gently, and say "Thank you!!!" in an amazed voice).  Now he makes some of them on his own, like M, F, L, T, I, I, U, and J.

The alphabet is just one of his favourite things.  And seriously, this kid loves to learn.  He has known all 11 of the main colours since about 18 months.  He has also known most of the shapes for several months (circle, oval, square, rectangle, triangle, star, diamond, and heart).  And when I say he knows them, I mean that he will show you that shape (or colour, or letter) and tell you the name of it.  Not that we say "Where's the star?" and he picks it out.

Obviously I am very impressed with my kid:)  And so is everybody else, really.  Strangers can't believe it when he gets going.

By the way, my impressive kid is not having a nap today.  I had a friend and her baby over today and we were having such a nice time that I completely lost track of time, and before I knew it, it was 3:00.  If I put Noah to bed at 3, he wouldn't be asleep until 3:30, then he would sleep until about 4:30, and then he wouldn't go to sleep until 10pm.  So we are trying to skip a nap completely today.  So far so good, although it is 4:15 and he has started to get a little whiny, which is not his norm.  He's also slightly clumsy.  Haha.

Alphabet

December has been a bad blogging month for me.  I've had plenty I wanted to write about, but most of those things deserved pictures to go along with the words.  But I have been a little focused on other things in my spare time (like finding a better cloth diaper detergent, because the one I picked just does NOT work for us... and I have 3 bottles of it), so uploading pictures to my computer has been at the end of my list of things to do.

SO, here is one post that should have been up a couple of weeks ago.  Better late than never:


A few weeks ago, when Noah was just over 20 months old, he started pointing to letters and telling me what they were.  I believe his very first letter was E, followed closely by S, P, T, etc.  I was kind of flabbergasted, because we didn't have any alphabet toys or puzzles or books.  And I didn't spend any time teaching him his letters.  I think he picked it up from watching Super Why, a show all about reading and letters.  He loves that show.  He might actually like it better than Elmo, which is saying a lot.

He kept reading letters off of our shirts, or on the front of a book, or on our computers.  We'd tell him a new letter, and he wouldn't forget it.  So while I was running errands, I kept my eye out for some alphabet-focused activities.  I found the Baby Einstein Alphabooks during a quick Winners run.  It's a small box that has 26 books in it, one for each letter of the alphabet.

Each individual books has three pages of picture/word combos.

I only took pictures of two.  I don't know why.

Not once did I initiate playing with these books, but within two or three days Noah knew the entire alphabet.  At 20.5 months, he knew the entire alphabet.  Completely unprompted.  You don't have to ask him where "A" is, or where "N" is.  He can just point to any letter, in any order, and say exactly what letter it is.

And that's not all.  He also knows many of the letter sounds.  What sound does P make?  Puh, puh, puh.  T, K, S, B, D... he knows about a third of the sounds of the alphabet.  And if I don't keep asking him what he knows, he says "More?!  More?!"

So, he knows all his colours, he knows all his letters... now I guess he needs to stop counting "Two, two, two..."  

Although I really think that is adorable.  I won't be trying to change that anytime soon:)

Oh, as a side note, in the past couple of weeks Noah has started to imitate The Count from Sesame Street.  It's hilarious.  "ONE!  Ah ah ahhh... TWO!  Ah ah ahhh..."  Justin finds this especially awesome.