Creating the building blocks of language
If someone had told Tybalt as a young boy that he would one day be helping a child of his own, an adopted one with tentacles no less, mold letters of of clay he'd have laughed at them and possibly splattered them with paint. Patience with people had not been the redheads strong point and even now as he continued to mature it was not his greatest virtue. Still, the man seemed completely content to sit with Sandy in his lap as they went over the alphabet. His larger, stronger, calloused hands held Sandy's while they carefully guided the smaller hands into shaping the letters of the alphabet.
It wasn't the traditional way to teach one's child to recognize their letters but Tybalt had never been one for tradition. Besides this helped Sandy's hand eye coordination as much as writing did and was better for the kid's brain than just tracing the same thing over and over. That and Tybalt planned to make the lesson special making the letters last. The clay they used was the special kind that would later be baked and harden. The solid letters could then be painted and mounted on the wall of Sandy's room, or at least that was the plan.
Eventually all twenty six-letters and the numbers one through ten were made. It had taken most of the day with little breaks for Sandy to play and rest their hands and golden tentacles in the process. Not that the two smaller upper tentacles had done much work instead generally just twining about the toddler's hair and squishing clay into it that the lower ones had passed up to them. Sandy was going to need a bath and careful combing to get that out before bed.
Still Tybalt was satisfied with what they'd accomplished, everything was complete, minus baking and painting which could happen tomorrow. Sandy also seemed reasonably capable of identifying the different letters and numbers when they were pointed to or when asked to select a certain one. More practice would be needed to make sure he had them all properly memorized before any real schooling started but this was a reasonable and thus far successful first step.
As the green eyed tawny haired boy yawned and curled up on the couch Tybalt smiled. " Hey don't fall asleep yet you need a bath first" clay drying in the little ones hair would be a disaster. When Sandy's only response was a soft sleepy mumble the redhead just shook his head and bent to pick the small boy up. " Just relax i'll do all the hard work" he promised.
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