This weekend let your child create his own scrapbooks - one for the alphabet and one for numbers. All you need are two largish books, old newspapers, magazines, and old mail order catalogs. In short, anything in paper with pictures that he can cut out to create his scrapbook.

Kids enjoy making things with their own hands, and your preschooler is more likely to learn from something that he’s made himself.

Hand him a pair of blunt scissors (his old baby nail clipping scissors will do fine), and let him write the alphabet on each page, and cut and stick the appropriate pictures himself. It can be tiring, so lend a helping hand.

For the number scrapbook, you’ll need lots of pictures as the numbers increase. Use the catalogs here.

An added benefit: The cutting and pasting improves eye hand co ordination and gives him a firmer grasp to hold the most important tool of all - a pencil.

Enjoy!