Dom's Letter Game

So, even though Dominic is over 4 1/2, he STILL doesn't know all his letters.  Even ignoring that fact that I teach reading to young strugglers this is a serious 'Parenting FAIL'.


He went through an interested in letters phase, but lost interest before he knew them all.  I bought a workbook to do with him, but he isn't really wanting to do much with it, so it gets ignored often.

He'd rather fly planes and helicopters all day.  This is not an exaggeration. 

A few weeks ago, Dom started a game where he pretended to be working for an air patient emergency service company, like my husband dispatches for.  He wanted me to dispatch him and then pretended to fly helicopters to various pretend hospitals and airports.

Before I threw away a bunch of old boxes, I thought of him having airports for his planes and helicopters.  I let him play with the boxes on his own, then decided to turn this game educational.  After a quick gummy bear motivated pre-assessment, I found out which letters Dom didn't know.  I picked 5 of the ones that are most commonly used and wrote them in permanent marker on the tops.  If I was the kind who liked to make things cutesy instead of a functional minimalist, this would look a lot neater.  But it is a good game without any frills.

Yes, we gave our kid a wine box to play with - just keeping it classy.

Then I pretend to call Dom and tell him to take the helicopter/plane/bi-plane to "Airport/Hospital G-or whichever."  He has to drop off patients, pick up patients(I hide them under different boxes), and take them to other hospitals/airports.  He is starting to get the letters right.  Now the next step would be to have him hide the patient and tell me which letter to fly to.

Finding the patient hiding in Airport N

I see that we can extend this play with more imagination like ambulances and plot twists as well as move to letter sounds and other letters.  

Someday, if he's a pilot doing medical flights, I hope he does a few less barrel rolls.