my preschooler

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.

The Learning Journey

So my wee man has always been learning, a proper sponge soaking everything in. I may have just about over stimulated him when he was a baby then he showed a great interest in books and the outdoors and before you knew it his imagination was alive. Now he is learning a proper national curriculum at nursery. I smile when his diary tells me he has been learning maths and numeracy today and even better when it says social studies. I am like seriously he is 3. 

Learning is great fun for him now though and it such a pleasure to watch and be a part of. It's all about recognizing the numbers and letters now and he will spend ages trying to write them on his easel. He is so proud of himself when he gets it right. He got these two books for his birthday which lets him follow the dots to create the shapes, number and letters which he just loves. He actually uses the magazines we buy now and it's not just about the stickers. He sees the shapes in everything wherever he goes and I am always shown the squares and rectangles and triangles. According to him he is drawing proper pictures now and I have to be careful and ask him what it is a picture of so I don't get it wrong. 

He is so social about his learning and makes us a part of it. He will purposely make a mistake to try and catch you out. "Is it that one?" "Nooo". Even when he gets it wrong I am still so proud. I'll be honest I find myself thinking of the books about art and music that I can buy. What toys and art materials will foster his learning. Getting him to look at nature in different ways. I love his interest and excitement about learning and I hope this is the start of a fun and positive learning journey.

The ABC Song

I can still remember how my heart melted when my wee man started to do the actions to twinkle twinkle little star one day. Finally all the trips to bookbug and bounce and rhyme times at our local library was paying off! Suddenly action songs became firm favourites and we had a pretty good repertoire of songs. Now here we are merrily singing along to songs as well. Old McDonald held prime spot and well still does really and is always a fun way to play with our animal toys. The piece de resistance though is now the ABC song. Yes I am jumping about like a very happy mummy and have shown off this skill to anyone who is willing to listen. After all letters make words and words make sentences and sentences fill up our books with magical stories and tales.