Alphabet 'work'

One of the strangest things about autonomous learning, I’ve found, is the frequency with which children actually ask (beg, sometimes!) to do things that most of us autonomous home educators would steer well clear of - real ’schooly’ things. But then is the reason that they have never been put off schooly things because they’re done on their own terms - when and how they like, for as long or as little as they like? I think so, and I love the freedom of being able to say ‘ok, you don’t want to finish? that’s fine - do you want to finish it another time, or do you want me to finish it for you?’. There’s no pressure - it can just be fun.

A while ago our 5yo had been asking to make an alphabet frieze for sometime now - she doesn’t like having to ask things and was very into writing little notes and lists at the time but fed up of asking us, not only how to spell words, but also if we would write the letters for her to copy (she wasn’t confident enough to get the letters the right way round etc. yet). So she wanted something on the wall she could refer to whenever she wanted (we already had a number line used for similar purposes and made in a similar way!). Our 3.5yo hadn’t outright said she wanted to learn her letters, but seemed to be very interested in letters at the time and has always loved projects with a passion. So we made this:

I printed all the letters out off the computer for them to colour in and cut out (they both were very into cutting and colouring at the time) and then my cousin (who was staying with us) drew them pictures requested by them that began with the letters they were in charge of colouring in. So our 5yo did the posters with ABC, JKL, STU and VWX, each time thinking up pictures that she wanted drawn for her letters. Our 3.5yo did DEF, GHI, MNO, PQR and YZ and chose from a selection of pictures that her big sister had thought up for her. Our 5yo wasn’t interested in doing any writing for under the pictures, but our 3.5yo wanted to so I wrote them for her to copy and she did an incredible job! You might be able to just about read her ’pig’ and ‘queen’ but she also had a go at ‘mouse’ and ‘net’.

Our 5yo, our little butterfly, didn’t have the stamina to do much of it, and only did one poster per session (it took about three sessions, but my cousin and I kept saying we were happy to finish it for them if they got tired) whereas our 3.5yo, our attention span queen, did two and then only stopped because her big sister had started doing something that interested her more! Our 3.5yo was disappointed when it was all finished and wanted to do another one, but we’d run out of wall space so her Grandma suggested she make a poster with her name on it and lots of other things that start with A:

She seemed, at the time, to see ‘A’ as her name, so I was keen on the poster idea to help her realise that there’s more to her name than just ‘A’ and also that there are other words that start with ‘her letter’. I knew she would work this out anyway, given time, but she wanted to do the poster, so we did it! Obviously she could have done it anyway, even if there had been no tangible 'educational benefit' to it. She also, as you can see, had a go at writing some of the words herself and has done a fantastic job :-)

This still wasn’t enough for her though, so she then started working on an alphabet book, along the same lines as the frieze and coloured all the pictures and the letters before she ran out of steam. She’d made books like this before and will spend, quite literally, hours on them at a time. Our 5yo isn’t really a project person so it makes for a pleasant change to work with a child who learns in such a different way.

In the couple of weeks after making the frieze, our 5yo spent a lot of time looking at the frieze and then persuading us all to sing the ABC song with her - she obviously knows it very well, but our 3.5yo doesn’t so automatically got a lot of practice at the names of the letters and the order they come in. All on their terms, in their own time, in their own way, when they want and for as long or as little as they want. And most people in our culture don’t believe children will learn anything if they’re not taught it - pah!