The Preschool Prep Company urges parents to teach children the letters, numbers and shapes while they are very young – at the age of learning to talk. The idea is that children can learn to recognize and name letters just like they learn to recognize any other object. As children are innately programmed to rapidly expand their vocabulary and object recognition during the early toddler time period, why not make letters, numbers and shapes a part of those things they get to know first?
The concept came about when creator Kathy Oxley had a serendipitous experience with her youngest daughter. At about the age of 14 months, Kathy played a video for her daughter which displayed the capital letters of the alphabet. Along with the video, Kathy would say the letters several times. Surprisingly, Kathy realized a short time later that her daughter knew all of the letters, a result which came solely from watching the video with her mother.
Not only did her daughter love the videos, but she had also learned to love the letters. They had become like familiar characters in a story, and she was excited when she recognized them. Her daughter also learned to read extraordinarily early. This discovery, in addition to subsequent experiences, led Kathy to create “Meet the Letters.”
“Meet the Letters” followed the pattern of showing the letters and repeating the names several times. Also, expanding upon the concept of developing a familiarity and love for the letters, each letter of the alphabet is also shown as a colorful, animated character which acts and moves in ways to help kids remember the letter and its shape.
Kathy used a team of researchers in the field of early childhood education to help conduct studies on how well the video works. The following results were obtained from her first study:
“During the summer of 2004, Preschool Prep Company conducted a study to test the theory that babies and toddlers can learn letters while they are learning to speak. Participants ranging from 12 months to 4 years of age watched “Meet the Letters” daily for two months. Many learned their letters in less than two weeks. By the end of the study, 90% had complete upper and lowercase recognition. Most impressive, nearly 70% of children under 24 months mastered the alphabet.” (from the Preschool Prep Company)
Kathy is now involved in further research testing and proving the results “Meet the Letters” can provide. In addition, she has written a book called Teaching Letters Earlier which will be available in 2006.
