My four year old daughter has a favorite morning pasttime. Almost every morning, she requests one thing – “Can I send Daddy a message?”

What she really wants is to use my cell phone (with a Qwerty keyboard) to write to her Dad at work. I used to tell her no, or perhaps even begrudgingly agree.

But when I took the time to finally say yes, I watched something wonderful at work — she spent a great deal of time and care to type out all kinds of words. When she got stuck, she would ask for help, but then the next morning, she sometimes remembered that tricky word and typed it herself.

Not only is she getting a great chance to start on the road to reading, writing, and spelling, but her Dad also delights in receiving text message from her that read:

MOM DAD CAT DOG LOVE

For those of your without a nifty Qwerty keyboard (or maybe even without a cell phone), I have found that my daughter is almost equally enamored with an open Word document and free reign with the keyboard on my computer.