“ABC!” My daughter utters this excitedly at least twenty-five times within the first hour of my day. She is 15-months and is thoroughly obsessed with the alphabet. While she’s not yet able to identify the different letters of the alphabet, she’s able to recognise the difference between images, Chinese characters and letters (Humble-brag much?)…So, “ABC” gets thrown at me a lot, because, well—there are a million books in my apartment and almost everything in our daily lives contains words! Okay, okay…I do have a point to make here…

I’m sure you’ve heard that play is essential to children’s development and that you should always try to encourage your child’s interests by creating play experiences that provide opportunities for them to engage in intrinsically motivating activities. What exactly does that mean? Well, look at your child. What are they doing right now? (Sleeping? What are you still doing here?! Go to sleep!) If there is anything at all, whether it’s an image in a book, an object in the room or their own feet that capture their attention for more than a minute it’s interesting to them and chances are there is something there that is intrinsically motivating.

Okay, back to the ABC! (Thanks, Dr. Seuss!) My daughter really loves it and I know, she’s too young to actually learn it and it’s significance in our lives, but like I said, she’s obsessed. So I go with it. I extend her interests, but there are only so many times I can sing ABC before my brain melts. Luckily, there are a million things you can do and no, you don’t need fancy flashcards (they just eat it anyway) or noisy, headache inducing electronic toys. You can create alphabet art out of literally anything you can find lying around in your home—or even on the streets…but remember to sterilize it first! Once, before she was born (…simple times.) I made ‘fairy rice’. 

Sounds fun, right? 

It’s actually just raw white rice mixed with vinegar and food colouring. I found them again the other day and grabbed some white glue and a black piece of paper and wrote a ‘C’ with the glue and got her to sprinkle the fairy rice on it, and Voila! Pretty, pretty, Letter C!

You know what else is fun?

Paper ripping. Do some amazing finger painting and then let that kid just rip it up to their heart’s content—remember to take photos, because it’s really just pure joy—and then make letters out of the small pieces of paper. You can even glue them on letters that I’m sure you had time to carefully draw and cut out. Also, paper ripping is excellent for their fine motor skill acquisition, just sayin’.

Next time you’re locked in pollution prison and you need something to keep the cabin fever at bay, just take a look at your child…what are they telling you, and more importantly, what can you do to intrinsically motivate them.