Hellobee

For as long as I can remember, Drake has had a love affair with the alphabet which still continues to this day.  I don’t remember when it was that he really started to pay attention to them, but a quick check back on my Facebook posts shows that a few months before 2 years of age he was able to recognize a little more than half the alphabet letters.  Nowadays he has started to move past just saying letters, but also trying to learn to put them together; he can spell a small handful of 3-4 letter words as well as write all 26 letters.  Though I never formally encouraged any of this, I did realize that because of his great love of letters we seem to have quite a lot of toys and books all dealing with the alphabet, so I thought I’d share Drake’s favorite letter toys and books with all of you.

1) Alphabet– In my previous post about favorite book authors, I mentioned our love of Matthew Van Fleet books, so naturally we have this Alphabet book that is interactive and deals with animals starting with each letter.  Like all of Van Fleet’s books, it’s a big hit in our home as it combines Drake’s love of letters and animals. It has also introduced him to a wider array of animals including the Quahog Clam, Xenops, and Zorillas.

2) Munchkin Bath Letters and Numbers – For a very long time Drake hated taking a bath.  I’m unsure why, as most kids seems to love baths, but he would fight me and scream and cry almost the entire time he was in the tub. That made baths less frequent and super quick.  Then one day I decided to try something different to entice him to want to stay in the tub. $7 later and I now have a child who stays in the tub for hours.  The letters stick nicely to the walls and entertains him just as much as the letter books do. I can actually bathe him now, then sit and read a magazine next to the tub as he happily lines them up, spells words now, and in general enjoy being in the tub like most kids do.

3) Fridge Words Magnetic Word Builder – Drake got this as part of his Christmas gifts this year. I wanted to encourage his love of letters but also help expand them past the basics, and I thought spelling small words would be the next step. This was absolutely the biggest hit for Drake at Christmas time.  The letters are on our fridge and I don’t think a day goes by they aren’t played with in some capacity.  Sometimes Mr. Chocolate and I will notice that all the letters are in arranged in alphabetical order, or that there are small words spelled out on the fridge or Drake’s name.  Drake can spell out quite a few 3-4 letter words and I do think this toy encouraged him to stretch out and try to do more with his letters.  A lot of times when we play together, he will ask us to use the blocks to spell out a word for him and little by little they are added into his spelling vocabulary.

4) V-Tech Preschool Learning Alphabet Apple – I bought this for Drake right before I had to go back to work last year. Since Drake comes with me to work, I wanted a toy that would entertain him and he could play with by himself so I could do other things besides constantly monitor him.  I looked at a lot of letter toys, since I knew it had to be a letter toy to keep him still, and chose this one because not only did it teach the letters, but it also had songs, animals on each button which you could learn to spell, a guessing game with said animals, and what each letter sounds like.  I do think it’s because of that sounding out part that Drake knows his letter sounds. Often he will ask what letter a word starts with, and I can make the sound and he will tell me the letter.  This toy has stayed permanently in my car and every car ride Drake will ask for his apple toy and happily entertain himself with it when I’m driving.

5) Baby Einstein Alphabooks – This might have been the original starter for Drake’s interest in letters. A family I nannied for years before Drake had one, and I remembered how much fun the little boy I cared for had with them.  Each book is dedicated to one letter and inside are 3 words that start with that letter.  They are made of a thicker material and are glossy in touch. They are sturdier than regular paper books, which is always good when dealing with destructive small kids, as well as tendency to put everything into their mouths. So when I found out I was pregnant, I registered for them and my mother bought them for us. Drake has loved these books to death literally — as in we bought 2 more sets as he wore some books out and lost a few as well.  When he was younger he would line them up and stack them randomly, but as he has grown he learned to line them up alphabetically as well as read all the words inside them by himself.  I think it helped teach him a lot more words I than he would have known without them, as well as the first letter of a lot of words.  Nowadays he still likes to line them up and read them, but he also will place a few together and try to spell words out of them.

6) We never had the Leapfrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet, which teaches the alphabet and is the precursor of the Fridge Words Magnetic Word Builder I bought, and a great way to learn the alphabet.

7) Baby Einstein First Alphabet Book – As a companion piece to the Baby Einstein Alphabooks, I picked this book up for Drake early on once I saw how much he enjoyed the letter set. Drake adores Baby Einstein (and still does at almost 3), so he naturally took to this book as well.  What was nice about it was not only did it introduce him to additional words, but because of his familiarity with Baby Einstein as a whole he recognizes many of the same pictures that are the same from the alphabooks, making the book fun to play with along with the letter books.  Oftentimes when he sits and looks at this book, he will go rifling through his alphabooks box to find the coordinating letter book and match them together. I also have 2 of this book as Drake managed to destroy the first copy with the amount of reading he did with it.

8) Leapfrog Scribble and Write – I picked up this toy on a whim one day as it was on clearance at Target. I chose it because it has a writing part where it teaches you how to write each letter (upper and lowercase as well as shapes and other things), so I thought that would be a nice progression for Drake.  The machine will write out a letter and your child can trace it following the dots.  Drake learned how to write out most of his letters not very long after we got this toy, as well as some shapes.

9) ABC and 1,2,3: A Sesame Street Treasury of Words and Numbers –  We recently got this new book, when Drake picked it out himself on our trip to the bookstore. Sesame Street is a great stepping stone in learning letters since each episode has a letter and number of the day.  Since Drake started watching Sesame Street, those 2 segments are his favorite and oftentimes the only parts where he really will sit and pay attention.  It also has a section dedicated to numbers and goes up to 100 (not every number but 1-20 and then in tens afterwards till 100), so I think it is a book that can grow with him as he learns more numbers.

This is just a small sampling of the letter things in our home, but these are the ones that Drake seems to enjoy the most and continually use.  I am always on the lookout for new letter toys because of his love (obsession) with them, so any additional recommendations are always welcome.