Friday, January 30, 2009

ABC, easy as 123

M has an intense love of letters and numbers. His eyes are always on the lookout for ABCs and 123s, for example:

He picked up our shower squeegee and said "Big T, Big T"
A coffeee table was moved and left an indentation on the carpet. M said "L!"
When he noticed a horseshoe nailed to the ceiling of an art gallery, he exclaimed, "C!, C!"

This morning our plans were changed, so I needed to get ready quickly. I decided to let him watch a cartoon and there was a show called "Super Why" on PBS. From my bathroom I heard the character ask, "What letter makes the "tuh" sound?" and M responded "T!"...so I went in to see what was up. This continued with the letters O and P. He got both correct. Then I asked him "what word did you spell?" He said matter of factly, "stop." (Now I must say that we have talked about the word stop before when we see stop signs).

I listened to M participate in the rest of the show...answering all of the questions correctly. I decided to take him to the PBS SuperWhy website for some more action. In the "spelling bee" game, he correctly spelled cat, can, and bell all by himself by listening to the sounds and picking the right letter.

I am astounded not only by his development in this area but also by his interest. We haven't tried to push learning the letters and numbers on him. In fact, I have been a little leery about it wondering what in the world he will do in kindergarten if he already knows such things. But M is just really interested in them (intense looooove), so we have tried to follow his lead.

Now if I could only get him to love sharing his toys!

10 comments:

The Family K. said...

Wowee... it looks like M. will only reinforce the stereotype that all Asians are smartypants bookworms ;) You've obviously got a very advanced kid on your hands who will probably require some advocacy on your part when he becomes school-aged. You may want to check out a post a friend of mine recently wrote re. gifteness: http://occupationmommy.blogspot.com/2009/01/gifted-education-101-is-my-child-gifted.html

Anonymous said...

Shut the front door - this kid is a genius!

Seriously, that is remarkable for a child who jus tturned 2!! When I was a kid, my mom's best friend had a son who was a few months older than me named Scott. Well, it seems little Scotty was reading books like A Pocket for Courderoy (which I still cannot spell at 29!) when he was just over 2. I will tell you that he went on to be a VERY smart adult who went to and graduated from an Ivy League college and Law School. I'm not saying that will be M, I'm suggesting that you think about starting a college fund for him NOW! :o)

Kim said...

That's incredible....you may have a lil genius on your hands!

Kim

Tish said...

oops, i had meant to say "leery" not "weary"...changed it now. reminds me of the movie bull durham where tim robbins is singing wooly instead of weary! see how i shouldn't be the mother of a smart kid?

Room for More said...

Wow! I say you have an advanced little guy. You are correct, if they are interested in something it makes all the difference. I agree, if only our toddlers would love to share?

p.s. I am glad to know I have other frugal buddies out there. I either borrow movies from friends or use Netflix. We have Netflix so dh can have DVDs to use to test systems he installs.

Andrea said...

Rocket Scientist..I'm tellin' ya.
B-Day pics are GREAT!!!!
Love the Elmo.
Get the him the Sesame Street Preschool- Kindergarten Computer Program and watch HIS SMOKE!
Blue's Clues Preschool is pretty Cool, too. Joe talks to you the whole time. Mary Elizabeth LOVES it.

xoxo,
A

Tami said...

Sounds like your cultivating all the windows of learning that come your way. You have one smart little dude on your hands. OX

Sherry said...

Thats amazing! Get that boy in other language courses too (you know when he can retain everything) and he'll be set. Scholarships Ahoy Matey! Hehe!

Its neat to see how they develop (especially so quickly) and Kobi's since of direction always has amazed me. He remembers buildings and which roads to drive on left, right, etc and these are places we haven't been for weeks. I swear to God if you ever visit MD Kobi could direct your driving from the back seat and I bet baby Matthew could read the signs! LOL! :)

Jenna said...

HOLY MOLY!!!!! That kid has got it goin' on!!!! Seriously, that is NOT the norm! That's awesome......I'm not kidding when I tell you that Sawyer is only now doing exactly that! (He'd be the polar opposite from M- intensely disinterested in learning about letters and such.)

I love Super Why! If M likes shows like that, and you are inclined to let him watch now and then, he might really like "Between the Lions" (also on PBS and probably the best show on TV educationally) and Leap Frog's DVD series: "Letter Factory", "Word Factory", and a few others. My kids love these, but we're still on letter factory here! :)

OH, and maybe M can read Hop on Pop to you at night like Sawyer reads it to me! We're going to have to start comparing notes with my 5.5 year old and your just-2 year old!!! That's amazing- and really exciting!!!

And, whoever said that he should start learning another language early may be right.....if he shows and affinity for picking up language, then the earlier the better on a second language!

Can't wait to see what he's reading in a year!! :)

taiwanbaby said...

my kids all love the the leapfrog stuff too. when you get to schooling you'r probably not going to be able to go the normal community school route. we've had to look for other options, as connor was doing that stuff at that age also. it's fun and hard at the same time. you'll learn lots of stuff as his interests expand. i now know lots of facts about volcanoes and the solar system. the hard part was finding a school that was right for him.

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