Wow, what a surprise to drop by my own blog and see new post up that I knew nothing about!  Hmmm….  Time to change the administrator password perhaps.

I don’t usually post more than once a day, but since the last post wasn’t actually mine, I hope you’ll forgive the extra blogging.  So, without further ado, on to my subject for the day…

A friend told us about this awesome video called The Letter Factory by Leap Frog.  (Thanks for the recommendation, Amie!)  While I subscribe firmly to the thought that most ‘educational’ kids programing is more entertaining than informative, and that limiting your child’s TV exposure is best, I have been thoroughly impressed by this video.  Alethea enjoys watching it and I find it to be age appropriate and not annoying, which is all that I generally expect from our shows.  However, (bonus!) she really is learning her alphabet sounds!

Check out this video I took of her a couple weeks ago, keeping in mind that she had only watched the Letter Factory DVD about half a dozen times over the course of a month at this point:

(For die-hard cute kid singing fans, you can watch letters Q-Z by clicking here.)

At the time I took the above video of her, I obviously realized she was learning the letter sounds in the song.  But that wasn’t totally a shock to me, since Alethea picks up on anything set to music really quickly.  What did surprise me was when today at the Library she, completely unprompted, walked up to a big sign that said ‘READ’, pointed to the R and said, “Rrrrrr!”

So, there’s my sales pitch.  My two and a half year old can recognize the letter R and tell you what sound it makes.  Not because I’m a great parent or implemented some crazy rigorous reading program, but because she watched the Letter Factory a handful of times.  If you have a pre-reader in your life, I’d highly recommend this video!