This morning I woke up to my wee man "reading" his books in bed. Slowly pronouncing each letter and trying to form the words.
My wee man has hit a serious learning curve. I'll be honest I might be a tad excited and proud watching it all happen. I also might be going a tad overboard with encouraging it as much as I can. To be honest though he just seems to be just as excited and eager about it all without us. It's all started with his introduction to jolly phonics. He brings home a letter each week and then we spend a couple minutes each day talking about it. Here is where I go overboard and get crafty with it too. Nothing like googling a letter each week to find out what they are for.
After a twitter conversation with some teachers (who are great parents who blog) we were re introduced to the alphablocks. It certainly eases the guilt a little bit when I stick him in front of the TV and I have been saved from Umizumi. ABC is definitely the wee man's favourite song now as well as the jolly phonics song for each letter. He loves to write now too, focusing hard and following the dots. Then it seems to have spilled over into his drawing and colouring too. He certainly tries a bit harder now to stay in the lines. We have distinguishing bodily features now for the face arms and legs and he'll even give you a bit of hair. He drew his first bus as a rectangle and wheels.
Our craft activities are a lot more focused and we have an impressive collection of monsters and fish. Our key craft materials now are glitter and glue and googly eyes. Having a wooden floor and a wipeable plastic tablecloth makes coping with the mess a lot easier. I had to restock his craft box properly with card, paper plates and coloured tissue paper. Recycling in this household has taken on a whole new meaning. Admittedly I still like just giving him some materials and leaving him to his imagination and I love hearing all about what he is creating.