I’m teaching the boys to pick out their written name. I made cards with their names (front and back of the card) and the names of people they see frequently. I’ll need to create duplicates of the people cards and pin them to the people to help the boys figure out the “matching”.

My first “go” with Zelador was great. I showed him his name and asked him to pick it up off one of the blocks. He proceeded to roll the block. This isn’t easy to do. The block is a rectangle. I decided to take one giant step backwards and ask him to touch his name card. He did. I showed him my name and repeated the request. Then I showed both names and asked him to touch a specific name. He was correct five times out of six. His only mistake was touching my name once when I asked for “Zelador”.

When I brought them into the barn after a rainy day in the paddock I took my brand new BIG chalk and wrote Zelador’s name on his back wall. He was very curious and still looking at it (not eating his hay) as I left the stall. I wrote Zeloso’s on his back wall. He pretended to ignore me until I took a step away from the wall (as I was heading for the stall door). He walked to the wall and was still looking at his name when I closed the door behind me.