Gaia’s journey through numbers and words is an illustrated book that strengthens the key early skills needed for reading, writing and numeracy. The book alternates a narrative part – Gaia’s story – with a part of exercises that aim at facing small cognitive challenges engaging the child’s body, mind and imagination.

Gaia’s Journey is not just an adventure — it is an invitation to believe in one’s own abilities, to learn joyfully and to look at the world with eyes full of wonder.

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For who?

The book is designed to guide parents, educators, pedagogists and clinicians in supporting children’s development of early literacy skills during the first years of life—without stress, and through play, drawing, storytelling and curiosity. International research has shown that activities aimed at strengthening linguistic and phonological skills in preschool children can have highly positive effects on reading and writing development. They also help children approach future school learning with greater ease and confidence, while preventing difficulties.

School and family should not try to anticipate primary education, but rather offer experiences that nurture both mind and heart:

• creating opportunities to explore the body, rhythm and motor coordination;
• encouraging symbolic play, storytelling and free drawing;
• sharing reading, listening to children’s stories, inviting them to ask questions and to imagine;
• offering logical games such as puzzles and building activities;
• welcoming mistakes and turning them into opportunities for growth.

Prerequisites are not goals to be achieved, but processes to be cultivated. Each child has their own rhythm and path, and the role of adults is to accompany them with patience, trust and competence.

THE EXERCISES

Young readers are guided through targeted exercises that strengthen:

Attention

Visual perception

Spatial orientation

Letter and sound recognition

Numbers and sequences

Leaf through some pages translated into English to facilitate your evaluation of the product:

THE AUTHORS

Maria Condotta, primary school teacher specialised in intervention models for Special Educational Needs, Specific Learning Difficulties and Gifted Children, as well as in Children’s Literature. She collaborates with Mind4Children, a spin-off of the University of Padua.

Nicoletta Perini, psychologist, specialised in Life Cycle Psychology and expert in the Psychopathology of Learning. She has worked as a clinical psychologist in centres dedicated to the diagnosis and intervention of school-related difficulties.

Also discover Gaia’s journey into emotions