In all honesty actual reading isn’t on top of my priority list at the moment, well not for Aidan at least.

He will be three soon and I don’t expect him to be reciting sonnets, but I do want him to love books and reading. There is something so special/magical/uplifting about being able to immerse yourself in the written word. Also you can then use sentences like “immerse yourself in the written word” quite successfully-hehe.

Right now I’m working on helping Aidan recognise letters of the alphabet, he is pretty much only interested in the letter A because A is for Aidan.

Here are 6 tips/games I’m using to get Aidan more interested in the other letters…

– I let him trace the letters using colourful stones or beads

– We play a treasure hunting game where we collect pictures (he loves taking pics) of objects that start with a specific letter… ants, apples, antelope (we don’t have antelope or artichokes) he suggested a picture of himself and of this blonde haired Aidan he met once.

– I let him go through my old magazines with a highlighter looking for specific letters

– I let him colour/paint/collage (you know this means tear off paper and  haphazardly glue onto letter right?) the letter of the week

– I use things like scabble or bananagram tiles and have him pick out the letter of the week

– At the end of the week I want to give him a felt letter signaling that he knows that letter now (just thought of that now-don’t you just hate me… we are heading to C now so I better get working on that)

We also read pretty regularly, very regularly. The Kid’sBookClub means we are building quite the collection. The service gives you the chance to build up a library that grows with your kid at the steal of R145 per month. That is two books and two magazines which is AWESOME.

Any more tips on raising a reader???? DO SHARE!