My little G has presented me with new opportunities to focus on early literacy.  There is a wide enough gap between S and G that I was nearly out of practice.  And to be honest, I am not sure I had much practice to begin with.  If my memory serves me correctly, A came out of the womb half-literate.  By the time he was four he was trying to write the name of Central Asian countries, and at four and a half he could spell “micropachycephalosaurus.”  Remember, this is the aspie we are talking about here, the one who must know everything dealing with his chosen subject.  That last word, by the way, is a type of dinosaur, and please don’t look it up, because I may have spelled it incorrectly.  Perhaps it is because I have simply forgotten, or perhaps, sadly, because S is a middle child, but I have few memories of him really learning to read.  Somewhere between four and six, he did learn.  So,  now, here I am with G reading book after book, revelling in environmental print, finding ways to incorporate words and letters into our play dough or painting or bathtime.

Here is what we have done the last couple of days.

I know that this is not an original idea, particularly.  I have seen preschools and websites galore allowing children to explore the large forms of letters.  We decided to make this on our kitchen floor with blue painters tape.  Creating the curve of the letter ‘C’ with straight tape was more difficult than I imagined, but G recognized it immediately.  That is mostly what I cared about.

‘C’ is for cowboy.  Here he is lining up his Papo and Lego cowboy figures in formation.

‘C’ is also for car.   He showed a bit more enthusiasm for driving his car along the ‘C’ than I expected.  Generally, he is not a car enthusiast.  Completely the opposite from how A was at this age!

Next, letter is                                                                                                                       !!!!!

And yet, I am not sure how much he is really getting out of this.  He spends the vast amount of his time actually looking at his books and focusing on word recognition: cat, farmer, happy……oh, and consequences, of all things!  Regardless of which of my boys I am talking about, I am fairly confident that the literacy activity which is 100% effective is, of course, reading, reading, reading and more reading.  Who doesn’t love a good story?  Or sharing it with someone they love?