The Best Laid Plans...

Sometimes things happen in ways you don't expect. When there is a toddler around it seems that things seldom actually go anywhere near where you had foreseen them going. Of course there is a story to go along with this statement. 

During my free time I like to go online and brows the blogosphere searching for things fun to read, educational, or helpful to making me a better parent. Today I was reading one of the blogs I follow, mommieshome.net, and they posted about an interesting online program for teaching children phonics. It is a program that requires a subscription fee to use, but they provide a free trial of two lessons. T was sitting near me, so I decided to give it a try. He seemed interested in it on my laptop, so I went ahead and pulled up the lessons on his computer. He was clicking away at the letters and hearing the sounds. He is just starting to get that sounds and letters go together, he is not great at it yet. So, I was helping him a little bit by prompting him to click the sound button, which repeats the sound. I was hoping he would hear it enough times and start to make connections. It seemed like it was going well, until he had to say 'B'. 

The letter 'B' became BEE, and it went downhill from there. 

 

[caption id="attachment_143" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="T testing out some phonics software"][/caption]

Here T is, playing with the game online. He was having fun, and rapidly it became more interactive than expected. He said the letter 'B' and suddenly he was up on his feet running across the room. "Come on Daddy, I am a bee and I want some honey.", he yelled back to me. I got up, interested to see where this would lead. I followed him into his bedroom, where he must have coincidentally been playing as a bee earlier in the day. I walk into his room and see this:

 

[caption id="attachment_144" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="T buzzing like a bee. "][/caption]

T is flapping his arms and buzzing like a bee. He tells me he wants some honey, and then quickly heads into the hive to get some. (The hive is a collapsable laundry basket.)

 

[caption id="attachment_145" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="T, the bee, in his hive."][/caption]

On the plus side, 'B' was the correct answer to, "Which letter makes the 'buh' sound?" However, at this rate it could take a while to get through all the letter sounds.