Book One of The See and Say Series is a Picture Book, which, by means of its pictures and stories, presents and teaches the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, with simple lessons in word building. It will be used by children in the first months of their school life, after they have had a number of reading lessons from the blackboard and have begun to understand what reading means. Before coming to school they have played with picture books. They have had a common experience. The mother with the child on her knee, holding the open book, has shown the picture. The finger of the child has pointed to the picture, and he has named the objects attracting his attention. He has mooed when he saw the picture of the cow and barked bowwow when he saw the dog. He has perhaps found the names below the picture. He has played with blocks and has sometimes named the crooked s and the round o. It is an easy step, then, to the attractive pages of Book One. Here a picture is presented, to be accompanied by the story which the teacher tells. The child is interested in the picture and in the story. Every story with its picture suggests the sound of the letter which is being taught. The cow calling for her calf says m; the snake hissing says s; the baby asking to be taken up says u, etc. The child, eager and interested in the picture and the story, makes the sound over and over again, clearly and carefully, under the teacher's direction. Then he points to the letter and learns that it stands for the sound. Beneath the story picture is the type picture, representing a word beginning with the given sound. The children recite with the teacher, The cow says m, and m is the first sound of moon. They find m in different places, making its sound whenever it is found and reciting again with the teacher the key sentence, The cow says m, and m is the first sound of moon. This lesson accomplishes several results: 1. The child, interested in his lesson, becomes conscious of the new sound m. 2. He attends to the sound, listens to it, repeats it, until it becomes a real thing to him. 3. He associates the sound with the letter m. 4. He associates both the sound and the letter with the type word moon, which has for its initial sound the sound which the cow makes. This is a clear, definite, and natural order of securing the attention of the child to the new idea, connecting the sound with the letter, and presenting the idea of an initial sound. Every new sound is taught in this order: the story, the story picture, the sound, the letter, the type word with its initial. All lessons which do not present a new sound provide drill upon the sounds already learned. The book presents all the letters of the alphabet, with ck, ch, sh, ow (ou), ng, ee, oo, oy (oi), th. Finally, the fact is impressed that every letter stands for a sound; that letters are combined to form the printed or written word; that sounds are combined to form a spoken word; and that a word may be separated into its sounds or built up from sounds.
