P is for Paddington ...

Littl'un has become very interested in letters and words.  She was given a letter jigsaw a while back which she really enjoyed playing with and through which she learnt the alphabet.  As she was constantly asking people to write down words for her and had started to recognise some whole words, e.g. mummy, gruffalo, Paddington, I thought although she's not quite 3 she might enjoy learning to read.

So we got a range of early readers from the library and gave it a go.  It was not a success!  She could recognise the words but wasn't remotely interested in doing so and faced with stories that she thought were duller than a duller thing she made up her own instead!

From what my mum has told me about how I learnt to read I should have known better.  My elder sister had learnt to read when she was 3 with Peter and Jane and flash cards and mum just assumed I would be the same.  Poor mum! She spent over a year gently trying to encourage me to read blinking Peter and Jane with her to no avail.  I just stared out of the window, dropped off on her lap or wriggled away to play something more interesting.

Smiling Like Sunshine has a great post on letter boxes plus
lots of other great ideas on Montessori style learning

It looks like littl'un is going to take after her mother with the attitude that when she sits down to enjoy a good story she wants all the excitement of Pumpkin Soup, Fantastic Mr Foxand her current big faves Tom Kitten, Peter Rabbitand The Flopsy Bunnies.  She does not want "I like Peter, I like Jane" or even its more up to date equivalent.

But she is still incredibly interested in letters and words so I am trying to come up with some activities through which she can enjoy experiencing letters and words in the world around her.  I've come up with and found a few ideas but would love to hear more.

Alphabet Boxes
We came across these on the Smiling Like Sunshine blog but I think they're quite a common Montessori idea. To start with it's just been me putting things in a basket with the lower and upper case letter.  But now we're expanding it so we keep our eyes peeled throughout the day for anything else that can go in the basket.

Paddington's Busy Bee Adventure Trail
By chance we got Paddington at the Carnivalfrom the library.  Paddington and Mr Gruber enter a Busy Bee Adventure Trail in which they have to find all the words they can at the carnival beginning with a b.  Littl'un loves this story and so now we play it ourselves when we are out.  We do cheat and resort to number plates with some of the tricky letters ;-)

Name Board
Nursery has a name board which everyone puts their names on to when they get there in the morning.  So we made one of these for the teddies.  It can be a tad time consuming just before bed when all the teddies have to find their name but is a lot of fun!

Writing Stories
A few weeks ago littl'un wrote a story, about princesses who eat Victoria sandwich cake but get eaten by a bear, with her key worker at nursery.  She enjoyed herself enormously and we've written some more together since.  She dictates it, draws picture and "writes letters" (completely freestyle without my input) on some pages.  If you've got a toddler who can already spin a yarn I can't recommend this enough!

I hope to keep adding to this post with more ideas and also to my Pinterest board but if you have any great posts yourself on learning to read please do add to the linky: