Greek Letter Lab

A parcel arrived at the farm with a stamp from far away. It was from Athens, the cow who had moved to Greece last spring.

Inside was a set of wooden letter tiles and a note. "Dear friends, here are the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet. Can you learn to read them?"

Little Thunder tipped the tiles onto the table. "Some of these look just like ours!"

Suzy picked one up. "This is alpha. It looks like our A and sounds like it too. And this is beta, like our B."

"Easy!" said Little Thunder. He grabbed a tile shaped like a P. "And this one is P!"

Spike shook his head. "That's a trickster. It's called rho, and it sounds like our R."

Little Thunder stared. "A P that says R? That's sneaky."

They found more tricksters. A letter that looked like an H was called eta. One that looked like an X was chi, which made a sound a bit like clearing your throat.

Then there were the brand-new ones. Suzy held up a tile shaped like a little doorway. "This is pi. It sounds like P."

"And this one looks like a horseshoe," said Spike. "Omega. It's the very last letter."

Little Thunder carefully lined up some tiles, sounding them out. "Al-pha... ah. Wait, this word says..."

Suzy leaned in. "It's a Greek word for friend!"

That evening, they wrote a letter back to Athens. Little Thunder signed it with a big wooden omega.

"Because it's the last letter," he said, "and the end of our letter."