G is for Gecko...

'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.' (English proverb)

With the majority of organised activities Mr A's response is: 'Mummy, I will do it later.' or 'Mummy, you can do it yourself.' (both read as 'I don't want to do it!!'). 

Well, unless we are speaking about exploring the nature or playing with any sort of vehicles...

So far, all our literacy activities have been on an ad-hoc basis. But oh, when I step back and observe and catch that perfect moment, the activity evolves beautifully. 

 

Map reading

It all started on an afternoon trip to an arboretum. I was struggling to keep Mr A motivated, so I asked him to lead the way using a very simple map of the arboretum. He was adorable, as he was trying to act as an adult using very mature voice.  And he loved it...

'Mummy, we need to follow this yellow path. Then we will see a pond. And this is our street.'

 

Since then, I have been using very simple sketch maps when we go out and about. Sometimes we make the map together, so Mr A can help to decide either about what we will be doing together on a certain day or about trivial things such as the colour of symbols. For obvious reasons, I try to include a choice of different options on the map; for example a trip to the park or to the pond. 

I am trying to create a literacy rich environment at home and map reading just seems to be an hands-on extension to this. Mr A is able to recognise more or less all the letters of the alphabet now and actually loves spelling out the words or reading the numbers on the map.