Putting sounds together

For a good while now, Elena has been able to tell us the sounds that a number of letters make. But whenever I would try to put together some of the letters she knows into a word, she was completely uninterested. I told myself not to push it, that she would be interested in it when she was ready to learn it and I should just wait it out.

She is now showing interest. Saturday morning, she brought me an alphabet book and wanted me to sound out all the words with her, letter by letter. This morning (I'm home due to a federal holiday), Elena wanted to do some letter work while eating her morning mango. I wrote a word ("CAT") and said that if she could figure out what the secret message was, I would draw it for her. I asked her what sound each letter made, and she told me without difficulty (She knows those three letters well). In general, she can get to this point, but she still has difficulty putting the sounds together into a word. But today when I asked her to put it together, she said, "Cat! But I wanted a dog..."

We then got out the sandpaper letters and did some other "-at" words. The only other one that she was able to put together into a word by herself was "bat," but she still enjoyed the process with "mat" and "pat." But soon she requested to switch activities to trace letters in the sand, so we did that for a bit as well.

Also, as a related sidenote, Elena has taken ownership of the letter "E." Now, when she sees it places, she says "That's my letter!" I ask, "Why is that your letter?" She answers "It's /e/ for ehhh-lena!"