Colby recently learned all of his letters. He went from just knowing one or two, and having no interst in learning them, to knowing them all in a few weeks. How did we do it? Pure bribery!

He had a collection of 4-5 cars from the Disney movie Cars. He had had them a long time and hadn't played with them in a while until Santa added to his collection for Christmas. He got 1 or 2 more and then quickly realized that there were more he didn't have. Shortly after Christmas we were in Target and walked by the toy section. I let him get another car to add to his collection. It became an obsession and he was constantly asking for more Cars, listing off the ones he didn't have yet. So, we decided he needed to do something to earn the cars. Jordan and I decided on letters. 5 new letters = a car and that kept going until he knew them all. I guess it was a great idea because he was very motivated, but he was driving us nuts! Every 5 minutes he would want me to help him learn his letters so he could get a new car. It also turns out that you can't just run to Target and buy all the characters. We ended up at the Disney Store in the mall and buying some online. There was one Saturday that we went to 5 different stores looking for specific cars. There are a few he still wants that are rare and only found on ebay, so he is just going to have to live with out them. Luckily, he is fairly satisfied now and has mostly stopped asking for them. Now...he wants all the characters from Toy Story! We have a new system for that. I'll write about it another time. Let's just hope he doesn't grow up and start collecting Star Wars stuff!