Should my 3.5 year old recognises letters?

[hollingbury]

He doesn't seem to, except the odd one. Much better on his numbers.

We don't do it at home - should we? If so, what is best?

My 3.5 year old twins are learning to write their names at nursery. They also pick out their name card off the table when we arrive at nursery stick it on their peg, so they recognise their printed name.

At home we have letter magnets on the fridge and foam letters that stick to the tiles above the bath. They started by holding them up and asking me what the letter is - I chose to go with phonic sounds (ish) and peoples names to tie in with nursery; so we have 'a for alex' 'b for becky' etc etc. They can now pick out the letters that correspond to important names in their lives (their own, mine, DH's, m for mummy, d for daddy etc etc).

I have no idea whether this is the right sort of stuff to do with them, but they instigated the games and enjoy then too much to stop now! I hope I'm not storing up confusion for them when they start phonics properly though

Don't start thinking he 'should' be doing it- all children are different, and he won't know them if no one has taught him!

As for whether you 'should' teach them to him, that's really up to you. When he starts in reception, the teacher will start from the beginning, so it won't matter if he doesn't recognize letters- he will pick them up quickly. However, if he seems interested it certainly won't do any harm. Just make sure you use the correct sounds e.g. m is 'mmm' rather than 'muh'.

You could use alphablocks to start him off, or something like Jolly Phonics, and magnetic letters. But again, only if you and he both want to!

DS1 is 3.8 and only recognises a few letters. He also knows his numbers very well and has done for a year. He has all the magnetic letters, watches alphablocks if its on, etc etc etc

He's just not been interested before and is just now starting to ask about words and What does that say, mummy?

Its fine. This time next year, when he's gearing up for school, he will recognise his name and the alphabet letters I expect, and no more is necessary. I shall just be encouraging whatever he shows me. That seems to have worked so far for everything else.

My dd at 3.5 could. She is a year older and is pretty good at sounding letters out etc....

But. She can't count to 20. She misses 16 out every bloody time !

So my point? They all have there strengths and weaknesses. I really wouldnt worry. I haven't pushed her with letters btw, it was her own interest and help from nursery. I am a teacher and I think at this age they are way too young for worrying about where they should be academically. There is plenty of time for that.

Omg. I have made the mn sin of admitting to being a teacher and making a massive typo spelling/grammar mistake.

Tut tut Todayiamfat...... Detention for you at lunchtime.

I think it depends on what interests them. Dd1 learnt her letters before she was 2yo. However she didn't know her colours until she was over 3.6yo-I thought she must be colourblind. No, they just didn't interest her.
Also it's opportunity. She decided at about 20 months she wanted to play on the computer. We had nothing she could play on (nor internet) at that point, so I put her in Word, large letters and let her fiddle on the keyboard.
After a short time of that she started asking how to write actual words. So she'd say something like "table" and I'd say "t for table" , "a for apple" etc.
By the end of a fortnight she knew all the letters upper and lower case.
She learnt her numbers (1-9) one time when we were stuck waiting for the number 2 bus for a very long time, and number 1, and 3-9 went past frequently.

In neither case did I set out to teach her, it just happened that we did something she initiated and happened to learn them.

Ds was interested in numbers, but not letters. not sure when he knew his letters, but I do remember the point he could count up to 29. He then stopped, thought about it and triumphantly announced "bumpty, bumpty-one, bumpty-two...etc"

If you want to teach him, then things like alphablocks are great-there are also some games on the Cbeebies website for that, which ds did enjoy. But don't feel you have to teach him. The fact that dd1 knew them all at age 2yo has made no difference except at that age. It has not effected her progress or anything else.