GUEST,lox:

The letters were written on cardboard squares double the size of today's Scrabble letters.

I Guess he must have started teaching me the sounds of the letters first, though I don't remember that. Once I'd learned a few letter-sounds, I would pick some letters at random, and my father would use them (or as few of them as he could, initially) to form a word. Then he would rearrange them, adding perhaps another of the chosen letters, to form another word, and so on.

Soon afterwards, HE would pick a few letters and ask ME to form a word. As I learned new letter-sounds (and later also letter combinations, diphthongs etc), we would bring them into play also.

There was no sense of scoring or trying to see how many words we could form, no target or rewards, just a sense of the magic of letters and language and what fun it all was. I remember laughing at how easily one can change a word meaning something nice into one with an ugly or sinister meaning.

Although not explicitly aimed at it, an inevitable result was that I memorised quickly the spellings of different words, and I became very good at orthography. Even today, when I see a misspelled word I physically cringe - I put it down to the lessons of those days.