Letterland Day at Tweetsie Railroad

   This was an exciting day in kindergarten!! We went to Tweetsie Railroad in the NC mountains for Letterland Day.  Letterland is a wonderful multisensory phonics program that we have been using at Valmead for several years to teach our children to read, write, and spell. It was first written in England by Lyn Wendon nearly 40 years ago, but I started using it 7 years ago.  Since then, it has been adopted by my whole county and we have seen excellent results. So today when I got to see Mrs. Wendon -- and she recognized me -- it was like seeing a rock star!  Because our school was one of the "pioneers" of Letterland in our area, she and her son came to visit and take pictures a few years ago -- there are even some pictures of my students in the teacher's manual.  But today, when she kindly told me that my enthusiasm played a part in the success of the program -- well, I was floating for the rest of the day! It really had nothing to do with me -- I was just responding naturally to a program that I loved! But it sure made my day!

As for the rest of the day -- we all had a great time -- the weather was perfect -- and one said, "This was the best day ever!!" The kids were so excited to see the Letterland characters they knew so well -- running up to hug complete strangers because they were dressed like a letter of the alphabet.  It was a laughing out loud kind of day -- and I am thankful to everyone who helped the children have so much fun celebrating their accomplishments in reading. I love my job!!