Teaching Letters to Young Children

My children as toddlers, in their first burst of language acquisition, have loved to learn the names of animals and the sounds they make. When Karina, my oldest, turned two, my mother suggested I teach her the letters as well. She said that in her experience it was easier to teach children letters as toddlers when they are enthusiastically labeling everything in their environment than it is to wait until they are four or five years old. When we were children she taught my brothers, my sisters and me our letter sounds at two years old; we learned the letter names later. I decided to teach my children both the names and sounds at the same time, reasoning that if they knew that a cow says moo, they could learn that "m" says mmmm.

I agree with Shinichi Suzuki that education begins at birth and that we tend to underestimate what young children are capable of learning. My daughter Helena, 18 months, has reminded me of the enormous potential in every human being this week. Yesterday after eating a banana, she carried the peel to the garbage can by herself. At dinner when I asked someone to pass the milk, she pushed the milk carton towards me. These are simultaneously ordinary and miraculous accomplishments to me, ordinary because every normal child seems to blossom at this age, suddenly understanding and doing things they have been absorbing since birth, miraculous because of the explosion of latent ability that I always underestimate until it emerges. I consider throwing trash away a miracle, in part because I frequently wish my older children did it more consistently. I also sometimes sit patiently at the table pleasantly repeating, "please pass the milk" for a few minutes, then becoming less patient and pleasant when everyone ignores me.

"Human ability will not exist if it is ignored when in the seedling stage," Suzuki wrote in Ability Development from Age Zero. Children will only observe and learn those things that have been a part of their environment, and the most crucial part of this environment is the people in it. Parents and siblings need to spend time interacting with infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, consciously trying to model good character. In this way, "inspiration and interest are acquired involuntarily by an infant from everything he sees and hears, like a seed that is planted. This is what molds--forms--the character . . . . It is a frightening fact. By no means only words or music, but everything, good or bad, is absorbed" (Shinichi Suzuki, Nurtured by Love).

In a few minutes a day, children can learn their letters. None of my children have considered this to be work or pressure because I have approached it like a game, and they have frequently asked to do their letters. One fun and methodical way to teach letters I discovered when my second child was two. A friend of mine told me about the way her daughter's kindergarten taught letters with sounds and actions. I loved the idea, copied it, and over the years my mother, sisters and I have adapted and changed it. You can find the method and the flash cards explained more fully on my mother's blog. My favorite is the letter O, singing opera. We always sing the short o sound to a passage from Mozart's The Magic Flute where the Queen of the Night is singing.

Because I believe in exposing my children to "whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report" (Philippians 4:8), I have some favorite alphabet books that incorporate beautiful art. The first is Museum ABC, which also comes as a board book, My First ABC, published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (I own both versions). I appreciate the fact that all the examples for vowels utilize the short sounds. I try not to confuse my children with vowels when they are very young, so I teach them the name and as the sound I teach only the short sound. I find it easier to pretend that it only has one sound. When they are older, I explain that it sometimes says its name. Another book I like that is illustrated with fine art is Tigers and Sails and ABC Tales, but the vowel sounds are not as consistent. Sometimes with alphabet books I skip the pages with vowels if they use the long sound.


Flash cards, actions, sounds, books: what else is there? I also like letters that children can manipulate, especially the magnetic ones from Melissa and Doug. They come in both uppercase and lowercase. We use these to play games like "help the mommy M find the baby m" or "which one says sssss?" The more contexts children discover letters in and the more they use them, the more automatic that knowledge will be when time to learn to read arrives.

 "Inspiration and interest," acquired by a positive environment, are the foundation for all education, especially in the seedling stage. Whole-language enthusiasts are right when they say children reared in a print-rich home acquire literacy readily. Early childhood education, when approached in a positive, patient way, lays the foundation for a lifetime of enthusiasm for learning. I believe this is best done in the home, which by nature should be less stressful and competitive than a school. As a mother, I can appreciate three-year-old Luke handing me a piece of paper last week on which he wrote "L l."

"Oh, it says "LLLLL," I said.

"No, it says Luke loves Mommy."

Somehow, I don't think a teacher would retain that forever in her heart as I will.

Kindling the Flame of Motivation

"No, your left hand's too loud. Play finger 4!" We had piano lessons in a few hours, and I wanted Katie's piano teacher to hear a definite improvement in the way she played her newest piece, a Sonatina by Clementi. "Do it again!"

"I hate this piece!" Katie shouted.

"Why?"

"Because you always get mad at me when I play it."

At that point, I belatedly realized my mistake. In my anxious, not entirely misguided hope to impress piano teacher Margie with the results of our effort, I was squelching Katie's desire to learn. The parent's duty, according to Shinichi Suzuki, is to "create motivation in the child." Both last night and this morning I had barked out orders and created rebellion and frustration rather than a love for music and a desire to succeed.

In his book The Schools our Children Deserve, Alfie Kohn discusses the impossibility of directly motivating another person. He writes, "First, while you can often make someone else do something--in effect buying a behavior with a bribe or threat--you can never make him or her want to do something, which is that 'motivation' means. The best you can do is create the kind of setting and offer the kind of tasks that will tap and nourish people's own motivation" (Kohn 125). I think Suzuki understood this. Many of his statements appear to me somewhat cryptic because I have found wisdom in them as I have learned not too interpret them too literally. Parents may need to create motivation in their child, but this is done through creating the right environment and exerting the "right kind of effort," not through directly ordering our child to want to do something.

All children from birth had a natural motivation to learn. The inner drive to walk and talk persists no matter how many times they mispronounce their first words or stumble and fall as they take their first steps. Deborah Meier said, "a passion for learning . . . isn't something you have to inspire [kids] with; it's something you have to keep from extinguishing" (Kohn 125). If, as Plutarch wrote, "the mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled," this week I have unfortunately been the fire extinguisher rather than the match.

The downside of this is that I've been doing the opposite of what I should be. Luckily for me, there is an upside. It is:

1. I can change.
2. I have not completely killed Katie's desire to play the piano, just subdued part of it.
3. I know what I should be doing.

In my experience, skills that come less naturally to people than speaking and walking require more extensive efforts to kindle the flame of motivation into a blaze. Like playing an instrument, reading is not a developmental skill, one that people naturally learn as a part of growth into adulthood. The parent teacher can help by making the process interesting and rewarding even when it is at its most tedious.
This week, I have been successful at kindling the flame of reading in my 3-year-old son Luke even though I have smothered the flame of piano playing in Katie. He is at the earliest stage of learning to read, when it has little intrinsic reward. Reading lists of words, sounding them out slowly, without the fluency to enjoy a story or get useful information, is a difficult enterprise. I have discovered many ways to shelter and encourage these first sparks of reading.
I stuck with words that had the short "a" sound in our first reading lesson. They also all rhymed with "at." Luke knows his letter names and their sounds thoroughly, a necessary foundation to keep reading from being too challenging. We accompanied each word he read with an activity to add fun and variety. When he read "cat" we pretended to be cats; when he read "bat" he pretended to fly like a bat; when he read "fat" we talked about how Santa Claus is fat and pretended to be Santa; when we read "hat" he pretended to put a hat on his head. This made it into a game. Then I allowed him to reread the same words several times on different days before introducing new ones. Finally, after practicing these words, he read them for grandma, and a couple of days later, for his dad, giving him an opportunity to show off what he could do.
As I continue to help Katie practice the piano, I need to follow these same principles.

1. Make sure she has a solid foundation in the basics of the piece before progressing to more difficult things. In this case, practice just the right hand and left hand a lot before playing the piece with both hands.
2. Take baby steps as we move forward. We can take two notes, three notes or a measure at a time rather than trying to play the entire piece at once.
3. Find a way to add fun, variety or make it a game. We agreed with her piano teacher to see how many times in a row she could play each of the ending cadences correctly on one of her pieces. Each day we will see if we can do more repetitions than the day before.
4. Share our small successes with others. We need to celebrate our progress and share it with brothers and sisters, Dad and Grandma.

At times I have snuffed out my own motivation to work with my children because of the guilt I feel for my many mistakes. At these times, I remind myself of my successes so my failures don't overwhelm me. This week I can celebrate my progress with my niece. As I have taught her literature and writing, I have seen her motivation grow from a birthday candle to a bonfire. This week she asked, "Can you give us two writing assignments this week? I really like it when we get to do more than one."
Katie, please remember that I am human, I make more mistakes than I would like, but I love music and I love you. I hope to kindle your already fiery spirit into a greater enthusiasm for learning, not to douse it.

Learning Together

When my mother stays at my house, I sometimes wake up to music while she practices the piano. During her last visit my son Tommy taught her how to add ornaments to Bach's "G Minor Minuet," a piece they both play. As a child Mom spent hours at the piano, eagerly wanting to learn. She never had the opportunity to have piano lessons as a child, though. In the early 1970's while she was living in Bogota, Columbia, a friend introduced her to the Suzuki Method. Suzuki believed that if parents first took lessons and practiced before their children, they would be better prepared to help and motivate their children to play. She began lessons, hoping to learn herself while giving her children the music instruction she had dreamed of as a child. She practiced her way through Suzuki Piano Book One, also practicing with my older brother Jason when he began lessons, until they moved to San Antonio, Texas, where there were no Suzuki Piano teachers.

Mom had five children and little time for practicing on her own after she finally found a new Suzuki teacher years later. We all began to take lessons and she practiced with my younger siblings but no longer took lessons herself.

Having children that play the piano did not completely satisfy my mother. Three years ago, when she began homeschooling my niece, they both began Suzuki piano lessons. I have watched her practice, struggle, and persist. Learning a new skill, never easy, becomes harder as we age, but she has committed to take lessons for ten years. Through her example, I learn a lot.

Too often we give children the impression that learning is childish, merely preparation for life. How can we show them that it is really a continual process that offers joy and fulfillment? By modeling our message.

My mother loves giving advice to parents who are helping their children learn to read. She begins by asking, "What is the most important thing you can do to help your child with reading?"

"Read to them" is the usual answer.

"Wrong!" she triumphantly answers, "You need to read yourself."

For our children to have enthusiasm for learning, they need more than the trappings of an enriching environment. They need to have a zeal for education genuinely exhibited and communicated by their parents. As Margaret McFarland said, "Attitudes aren't taught. They're caught." I want my children to catch a positive attitude about education. Here, as in other things, pretense and hypocrisy will fail. They will only reinforce the notion that learning is like an immunization--children need frequent shots, adults need an occasional booster, and no one likes it.

Learning, studying, and even doing assignments along with children benefits the entire family. Children become motivated and see examples of learning in progress, parents gain empathy and learn to see their children as teachers, and everyone has a shared educational experience.

Shinichi Suzuki said, "creating desire in your child's heart is the parent's duty." He said that we do this through the environment, of which the parent is a vital part. Young children naturally want to do the things they see their parents do. I see this in my 16-month-old daughter, Helena. Nearly every day of her life, she has seen me write in my planner and my journal. Now she wants both my favorite pen and my planner or journal every time I use them. No diversion seems to quench her enthusiasm, so I am constantly deciding whether I want to endure a tantrum or risk getting ink marks everywhere. Right now my desire for quiet is winning more often, so the pages of my journal, planner, and Helena's and my clothes are full of scribbles. I have been instrumental in creating this desire in her heart even though I wish I hadn't. As parents, we can capitalize on this natural motivation to help children catch a love of learning.

It seems obvious that the perfect parent setting the perfect example would create the perfect situation for children to learn. But it's false. I think the greatest example we can set for our children is to be imperfect but continually trying to improve. If they only see us doing things we are already capable of doing well, they may never understand that no one begins as an expert. Often, when I check my children's math, I don't use the answer key but work the problems myself. My kids love it when I make a mistake. I think it takes the pressure off of them to always perform perfectly. When I practice pieces on the piano, my children can see that I play wrong notes or poor rhythms, and sometimes I have to practice a spot repeatedly until it becomes easy, just like they do. In the writing class we have over the phone, my mom has been doing the papers, too. I have see the benefits and now do at least some of the writing assignments I give myself. When we read our papers to each other, I like to point out areas where I think I could improve. My daughters and nieces get ideas of how to improve their writing without feeling like their efforts are being criticized.

Sometimes when I practice piano with one of my children, I wonder why they can't just play the right notes the first time. Later that day, as I feel frustrated at my own inability to get my fingers to play the right chord even though I know which keys should be played, I regain the ability to empathize with them. Learning, while always rewarding, rarely comes easily. For the Shakespeare class I taught this fall, I asked all my students to write an original sonnet, a task I considered straightforward at the time. However, when I decided to compose one myself, I understood the effort required and gained appreciation for Shakespeare's genius when my results seemed rudimentary and awkward compared to his.

I have also learned to see my children as teacher, another commitment in Chick Moorman's The 10 Commitments. This blog entry is the result of a few weeks of effort, and I have relied on my daughter Karina's help to take it from a jumbled mess of words into a somewhat organized progression of thought. When I see myself as a fellow student, I find that the other students can teach me just as much as I can teach them.

More than anything else, though, the process of learning together makes education a shared experience. A few months ago my son Tommy prepared a report on John James Audubon for Grandma's history class. I found books at the library, and we all read them along with him. When I saw a book with selections from Audubon's Birds of America at Costco, I knew it was the perfect present. A few weeks later when we stumbled upon the small Audubon House and Art Gallery in Key West, Florida, our whole family was excited to find out more about our new interest. Because we all learn together, my family is creating a unique culture of education and interests.

When she began playing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star Variations" on the piano almost 30 years ago, I think my mother wanted to give her children the opportunity to play music, something she also wanted for herself. Even though at this point her slow progress has driven her to the point of quitting several times, I hope she realizes that the music she creates in her mind motivates, teaches, and enriches her children and grandchildren, making our family culture vibrant, and the pieces her fingers haltingly play are masterpieces as a result.

The Apostrophe and Me

Yesterday morning my daughters Karina (14) and Katie (12) met me on my bed with a pile of grammar and vocabulary books to call my nieces in Texas for grammar class. We selected this "classroom" because the bedrooms are the only rooms in my house separate enough from family life to have the possibility of being temporarily quiet. My sons Tommy (10) and Jack (7) were supposed to be doing math, but I suspected they were actually researching the care and keeping of a pet scorpion, which had been Tommy's obsession ever since he woke up. As we worked our way through first our vocabulary book, 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary, and then our grammar books, Our Mother Tongue by Nancy Wilson and Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss, my fifteen-month-old daughter Helena sat on my lap, whining every few minutes for a chance to play with the phone, paper, a pen, a book, or anything else I happened to be using at the moment. Her three-year-old brother Luke kept entering the room to ask, "Can I play Lego Star Wars with Tommy?" After I had said no nearly a dozen times, he started talking about pets. It wasn't until class was over that I discovered I had given the impression that we were buying a "fish that swims in the water" at the pet store right now. I'm not sure how I managed to discuss new vocabulary words, compound sentences, and the multitasking functions of the apostrophe with so many interruptions.

According to Lynn Truss, the "tractable" apostrophe happily complies with the strange assortment of functions we have given her, continually overworked and misunderstood. Today I feel like an apostrophe, a little curlicue that floats above a word, simultaneously being Karina's and Katie's and Tommy's and Jack's and Luke's and Helena's mother. At times like these it seems like the solution is to find a safe, soundproof area where Luke and Helena can play by themselves, ideally with a free nanny, while the rest of us get some real work done.
But then I remember:

• Luke proudly writing letters on the white board on Tuesday at Katie's piano lesson, making me guess what each one was before shouting out "right" or "wrong."
• Helena swaying in an infant dance while Tommy played "The Happy Farmer" at his cello lesson, her eye's meeting mine with a half smile.
• Luke selecting a white goldfish with orange spots and holding it carefully in the car on the way home after I asked myself, "Why not get a fish?" I couldn't come up with any good reasons.
• Helena using the piano keyboard as a ladder that enabled her to grab a pencil and scribble all over the music books while I helped her older brother practice, laughing right into my face every time I pulled her down.

Since I don't have spaces in my life when I am not otherwise occupied, these circles of interaction always occur in the middle of something, bringing me a moment of joy and peace in the midst of the hurry. Several years ago I read a book called Building Healthy Minds by Stanley Greenspan about the development of the intellect in early childhood. I have never forgotten his term, "circles of interaction," for these moments between a caregiver and child when communication flows back and forth, with or without words. He wrote that these circles of interaction are important for brain development.

The Suzuki Method is based on the concept that we are educating our children from the cradle. Grammar, Geometry, History and music practice may feel more rigorous, but the youngest minds in my family are developing the fastest. I believe they may have the most to gain if Eric, Amy, Karina, Katie, Tommy, and Jack all find space in our lives for circles of interaction with them.