A is for. . . .um. . . .uh . . .

My tiniest student, David, is going to be super good at English. Why? Because at the tender age of 3 his parents began a pretty hard-core English regimen with him: cartoons in English, dad speaks to/at him in English, and I walk on down twice a week to have classes with him.

A three year old is hard to have for private classes. Even though we only have a half hour, after about fifteen minutes he jumps up and starts running in circles or throwing Gormiti toys around. Once calmed down, we resume our song or dance or whatever.

This year I have spent part of the time teaching him the alphabet song. My seven year old, Claudia, knows how to say all the letters in English and it's really convenient when I have to spell new words for her. So with David, we sing that song about 10 times each class while making an alphabet book. You know, the kind with cute pictures of words that start with that letter.

A for apple:

B for ball. C for cat:

Standard alphabet stuff. The only problem is, with certain letters, my mind goes absolutely blank on any word in English appropriate for his level that starts with that letter. No simple nouns, no easily illustratable animals, nothing. So here, after flipping through his brother's learn to draw book full of animals, we find J for jaguar:

Not bad, nice recovery. Here's I for insect, also found after consulting the book:

Then there's S for um, snake:

At V, I totally failed. V for vendetta? Nope, not appropriate. V for vandalism? Tampoco. V for verrrrry stupid English teacher? Probable, but nope. I came up with V for

VIPER!

Trying to explain the subtle anatomical differences between snakes and vipers clearly did not go over well, as this one looks like an apartment building with a tail rather than a snake or a muscle car.

The bad news? I still haven't gotten to W, X, Y, or Z.

X for Xerox copies? Y for yoda? Help!