Teaching the Alphabet

So I was reading a blog that suggested the DVD: Leap Frog, The Letter Factory. I have been trying to teach Owen his alphabet. It hasn't been going great. The only letter he knows is O. I bought this cute placemat with Sesame Street characters on it and we have been going through and pointing at the letter and trying to get him to memorize them. For each letter there is a picture of something that starts with that letter. He knows the pictures but not the letter. Although some of the pictures are a little challenging for him- like U for unicorn, which he says "U for horse", and I say no, it's actually a unicorn, and he says which is a "horse with a thing on its head". How can I argue with that? I have been a little nervous about this, because by this time, Ava knew all of her letters and what they said, and could write out a fair amount of them. Blame it on second child syndrome (yikes! what will happen with our 3rd and 4th!) but I haven't really been too worried about it until now. He has to take his kindergarten pre-screening in about 6 months (when he is the ripe old age of 4), and I have this fear that he will be the only 4 year old who doesn't know his alphabet. Not to mention this bizarre test where they tap out a rhythm and the child is supposed to tap it back. I never, in all of my parenting Ava, did "tap the rhythm and repeat it" with her. I felt like a ginormous Moron at that test. The teacher tapped out a little pattern, in which Ava responded with a blur of taps on the table with a huge smile on her face. To which the teacher said "Let's try it again with something simpler....." (repeat happy tapping in no pattern at all)

Anyway, saw that this DVD was recommended, so I rushed to Target and bought it. He has seen the video 3 times, and this morning he saw the letter X and told me what noise it made. Hello! My child is a genius!! I am way excited about it. I always thought that I would never be the mom who taught my children with videos- we don't even watch tv (movies yes, tv no). But I think for the alphabet I am going to be "that" mom. The one who uses pre-canned entertainment instead of devising her own plan to introduce him to the letters. Why mess with what works. I will have to come up with my own lesson plan for the "tap the pattern" however...