Letter Boy

Last night, Julie went to a parent-teacher conference with Joe's teacher. Ted stayed behind again to man the circus. Fans, it will perhaps surprise not one of you to know that Joe is bonkers--bonkers!--for the letters. He has figured out pretty much all of them, upper and lower case, in sequence and mixed-up. He apparently, right now, prefaces every lower case letter with "lower case"--e.g. looking at d, instead of saying "d," he will say "lower case d." A few letters give him trouble: G (occasionally), p (sometimes calls it b), and q (tough; how often does one see a lower case q?). He also knows the sound a lot of the letters make, though he will still sometimes say an S makes not just an sss sound (like Susie and snake), but also a C sound. He's got colors, shapes, and counting, too, down, but he isn't much yet for identifying numbers beyond 10 on sight. We are thinking of getting a big calendar for home, like they have in his room, which will have numbers up to at least 30 every month. Ms. Kristin reports he is a sweet boy, and nice, and though it was fun, of course, to see all the letters and such he's learned, hearing that Ms. Kristin thinks Joe is sweet made Julie's heart swell and eyes tear up a bit.

In a related sidebar, we should report that recently, Joe has been chirping about his friend Nina (N for Nina!) going to an extra class they offer called Phonics Learning Adventures, and even though Julie, despite her love of reading, recalls phonics being decidedly not phun, we thought Joe might have fun with it and so, signed him up!