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Alphabet
Soup
Learning
happens all the time and
doesn't have to look like school; it can look like play or even lunch.
I'm
ecstatic that my three year old understands that there exists tiny
squiggly lines that he calls, "A B C's." That's
all a three year old needs to know about reading. This
is the first step towards literacy. My
intent, at this stage, is to just refer to those squiggly lines as
"ABC's" and to make no distinction among them. Though
some letters you can't help pointing out. The
"O" looks like a circle or a ball and the golden arches are hard to
avoid. Is “M” the first letter all
children learn?
At this same
time he is going through a stage where he won't eat and I'm trying
desperately to find some food that will be palatable to him.
While at the grocery store, I told my children
to pick out anything that they would eat. My
three year old picked out several cans of "ABCs." I
asked him if he thought that the soup would taste good just because of
the large, colorful, puffy "A" "B" and "C" printed on the label, and of
course he said 'yes.' I warned him that it
was a can of chicken noodle soup and that he didn't like chicken noodle
soup, but he wanted "ABC's." So we bought
several cans of alphabet soup.
Today, when I
asked my children what they wanted to eat, my three year old shouted,
"ABC's!" As he stared into his bowl, I
took his spoon and fished out some letters. His
big sister pointed out the "H for hhhhhhhhiney" so I dragged a
refrigerator magnet 'H' down to where he could see it. As he
captured
individual "ABC's" in his spoon he would
ask, "what this one do?" and we would tell him, "That's a W for
wwwwwwwwwow" or "that's P p p p pop pop." We did this over and
over
again until I
thought he was finished.
I began cleaning
up some dishes at the sink, and he called me over again, "what this one
do?" In his spoon was a green pea. He knows what peas
are. I
thought about telling him, "That's a pea," but
then I realized how confusing that might sound in light of our recent
conversations. I told him, "That's an O
like a ball." I should have said, "That's a
vegetable," or something like that. I didn't think that
he might
be asking because he knew the little green thing in his spoon was a
"pea" but I had just told him that the squiggly noodle shaped like a
"P" was a pea. This little inconsistency stuck out in his mind.
He had to question it.
I
think that's how children's minds work! If
something doesn't make sense they set out to solve the mystery or to
understand it! That's wild untamed
learning. Children are
scientist-detectives, naturally. He only asked
about each letter once as if he remembered which letter he had captured
and inquired about. Do you think he
remembered each one? I don't know, and
maybe not in the way I would prefer him to because he later told me
that "H hhhhh is for butt. " (By Rebecca Atherton)
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