Tonight I got the chance to spend more than two hours alone with my son. So we decided to make a puzzle. We have a train/alphabet puzzle from Melissa and Doug. We took it into the family room and spread the pieces out all over the floor. I hid the box (which shows the completed puzzle) and we began by setting the first piece, the engine, on the floor in front of us. We then sounded out the alphabet, looking for which piece would come next.

With each victory we would sing the alphabet up to that point together. “A, B, C, D… ” and then I would look at my son expectantly, as if completely lost. He smiled at me with pleasure at knowing something I might not know. “E!” He shouts with excitement.

And then we begin the search for the piece of the puzzle with a picture of something that begins with the letter “E” on it.

He did very well. We had a brief argument over the existence of the letter “N,” but “O” simply didn’t fit with the “M”, and indeed, “N” is for nuts, just as sure as “E” is for Elephant.

What really amazed me was not just that my four year old son actually completed the puzzle by sounding out the letters with me, and locating the words which sounded the same with me, but that somewhere around “T” he started saying “Xylophone” as his guess for everything. He was clearly getting tired and not interested in this puzzle anymore. Especially not now that Daddy had made it so hard. But With some kind discussion and much cheering on my part, my son overcame the taxation and difficulty and zoomed into the home stretch of “X, Y and Z” which he knew them without even really having to sound them out at all.

We cheered and sang the entire alphabet together twice!

And then we sang it again in funny voices.