The Bub in the Belly

Here's a Youtube video (2:14 minutes) of Ryan playing with something we bought last Sunday, basically spelling words to match pictures.



Ryan is taking his time to spell as he is a little preoccupied with handling the material (this is the very first time he is playing with this). You can also see how tidy he is, making sure that the letters fit nicely on the spaces. I got a little impatient (because I know he knows the spelling for these words) so I tried to prompt him but I misled him by prompting with the wrong letter sound! He was spelling the word "CLOCK" (at 1:30) and he said "L". I wanted to repeat after him, but somehow I said "/e/" instead of "L", so he picked up the letter "E". Just goes to show that sometimes trying to help is not helpful!

Ryan can pretty much read all the words in the set, if I spell them out for him. The question is whether he can spell the words himself. Spelling is a different thought process from reading so even if you can read a word, you may not be able to spell it. For the picture sheet that you see in the video, Ryan is very familiar with the spelling for those words, but there are more advanced sheets in the set, which he may not know how to spell out, so we will be working through them slowly.

This set was pretty cheap - about $10 from Popular Bookstore. If you're interested in this sort of game, there are lots around and we have a few different versions at home. You can consider Boggle Jr. - Ryan has been playing Boggle Jr. at his nanny's place, which is similar - it also lets him form words to match picture cards (or word cards).