Like helping my eldest daughter get the idea of spelling by making ransom letters out of old magazines with her!
Mimi is four and a half, and in Australia, that means she's gearing up to start kindergarten at the beginning of the next calender year. Her preschool is starting to introduce 'school-readiness' programmes to prepare her. Many of the key skills involve social aspects, such as anti-bullying, sharing, patience, resilience, respect and so on. Hygiene, self-help (not the sort parents are seeking), independence, and even safe-scissor-use fall under the heading of 'readiness'. Common sense goes a long way here to get preschoolers prepare for 'big school'.
Then there's the alphabet; reading it and writing it. This is where parents start to get a bit wobbly at the knees, red of cheek and loud of voice. Of course it's important. Of course I want my daughters to succeed. Of course I don't want them to get left behind. But I'm trained to be an Architect not a teacher, so I'm putting my home-time energies into inspiring them to be curious, express themselves, stretch their imaginations, and introduce them to the idea of the alphabet and putting letters together in fun ways.
I cut letters (and pictures) out of old magazines while watching the television the night before. Mimi's first poster was a bit of a free-for-all, the main objective was to try to get the letters the right way up. The second one I helped her to find some letters and then together we started to spell out the names of people we knew. Little Lotti meanwhile was happy to make a 'family' (mum, dad, two girls and a dog (interesting since we have none - guess that's a hint-hint to me!)) and then she tucked that away and only let me photograph her crazy-collage.
Learning is a marathon not a sprint... and it should be fun... that's why I'd happily advocate you sacrifice an old magazine and an hour of your time, for the sake of some poster-rific alphabet fun!