Christmas List

Even though we are Christian, we still embrace the idea of Santa. I know of some Christian families who only do 3 gifts with the thought of Jesus only got 3 gifts. We don't do this. I look at Santa as being one of the first steps to teaching little kids about Faith. Believing in Santa is about Faith for little kids. They have to believe in someone who isn't here physically. It's just like believing in Jesus. If they can embrace Santa and the Tooth Fairy by Faith, they can embrace Jesus by Faith. So we do Santa in our house.

This year, Little Man is big enough to actually write a letter to Santa. Now, most 3 year olds would probably just draw pictures of what they want. Not my 3 year old. He can actually form letters! He can actually sound out words! So we sat down and he wrote a letter to Santa! I helped a little bit with sounding out some of the more difficult words. But otherwise, Little Man wrote this letter ALL ON HIS OWN!

Here is the direct letter for letter dictation:

DER SANTUA
PLAY DO ROWdY
GRbIG TRUK
biG DIGGR

So for those of you who don't read little kid:
Dear Santa
Play-Doh Rowdy
Garbage Truck
Big Digger

We have begun working on lowercase letters as well as uppercase letters, that's why there are a few lowercase letters in there. I decided to begin focusing more on those because that is the next logical step and what you want in kindergarten not preschool. He knows how to form his capitals, but the lowercase letters are more difficult. He pretty much sounded out these words all by himself. Yes, there are reversals of letters (N, d, b). Those are normal. I'm not worried about it and parents, if you see your kindergartner doing this, it is NORMAL! And no, I did not correct his invented spelling. Invented spelling is important. It helps with the kids learning the rules of our complex language. So parents, please don't correct your child's invented spelling when they are young. As they get older, they will learn the conventions needed to become good spellers. If you correct them now, you are setting yourself up to be correcting them for a very long time. They need the confidence to do it on their own.

I know it is just "Dear Santa," a list, and his name (yes, he did sign it). There's no "I would like" or any real sentence structure. I'm okay with this. It is his very first letter to Santa. The fact that he used letters and not pictures is a big deal. The fact that he actually tried to stay on the guidelines is a big deal. The fact that he sounded out the words by himself is a big deal. I'm just super proud of Little Man. He is growing by leaps and bounds!