early literacy.

This is what we do most of the day.

Quinn goes over to a friend's house every once in a while, where they have magnetic letters on the fridge for their three-year-old daughter. The first time he saw those letters, he was fascinated with them, so Robin bought him several sets of fridge magnet alphabets and a set of foam letters for the bathtub.

He plays with letters and books all day long, and he knows just about the entire alphabet, although the concept of capital and lower case letters still eludes him somewhat. (He reads the lower case "b" as an upside down "p", for example.) His first activity of the morning, even before breakfast, is to ask for a book from his shelf, which he will peruse and narrate over breakfast.

When we're out and about, he'll read out all the letters he sees, from the writing on the sides of passing trucks to the letters on the banner above the supermarket sliding doors.

The other day, we went to see the in-laws in western NC, a two-hour plus drive. He has a personal DVD unit strapped to the headrest of the passenger seat in front of him, and I tossed in a Disney DVD for entertainment to keep him from getting bored and cranky.

I couldn't help but smile when he preferred leafing through his book over watching the movie in front of him. He may just become a bookworm like mommy and daddy.