It might have been a bedtime-delaying tactic. But I’ll take it. You see, Katherine and I just spent a good fifteen minutes playing a spontaneous alphabet game.

We are in the middle of the latest in our favorite series, Gooney Bird on the Map. During our reading tonight, Gooney Bird and her classmates matched the first initial of their names to the names of the states. Keiko to Kansas. Malcom to Massachusetts. Felicia Ann to Florida.

You can guess where this is going.

Katherine began to name classmates as fast as I could name the matching state. Then she wanted to do colors and days of the week and so on and so on and so on.

As I say often, giving our children the gift of literacy can be so simple. Nothing to buy. Nothing to make. Just a book and a little bit of time…