Is this an auditory learner?

[delaney]

My 4.5 yr old DS cannot recognize letters well. If you ask him how to spell his name he will tell you the letters but can't recognize them. He can also repeat things we spell out. He told me today he need a b-a-t-h because he was dirty! He knows 4 letters. If I say what goes "down, bump, bump" he says B. Show him a B and he is clueless. He keeps asking me what does it say? He wants the sound before the letter name. That only works on certain letters though so he can't get C for instance. What is this!!!????

[Kates]

It's very likely the fact that he's 4 :) I know there's a push for kids learning these skills at an early age, but not all kids are there yet. Letter recognition - integrating the picture of a letter with the concept of a sound - is an abstract thing. Not all kids are able to automatically connect that, which is what I think is going on here. He can very likely do it, but he'll likely need to do so in different ways.

 

Are you concentrating on him learning the letters by picture? If so, I'd look more into kinesthetic ways of learning them. Work with refrigerator magnets, lapbooking (Hands of a Child has some really good ones for this, they take the concept "out of the box"), drawing with sidewalk chalk, tracing sandpaper letters, drawing them in shaving cream or whipped cream, etc. While you're doing that, say the names of the letters and help him put them together into words.

 

I would say he just needs to learn it from a different angle - it sounds like he's probably more kinesthetic and auditory. My son was able to recite letters and spell words when he was about 3, but he had to actually work with the letters (in concrete form) in order to connect them.