This study examines the multiplicity of literacies while incorporating multiple modes of meaning to understand a young trilingual child's meaning-making processes. This qualitative study reports the results of a combination of ethnographic observations and a longitudinal case study of one child's multi-literacy development from birth to age six. Specifically, this study aims to explore how the child named Francesca (pseudonym) integrated the literacy repertoire that she had developed in and out of formal education within a multilingual context. In working with the qualitative data from the multiple sources, the study relies on Vygotsky's (1978) dialectical approach as an analytic framework with an emphasis on the unity of multimodal understandings of literacy. As such, based on Vygotsky's idea of 'leading activity" defined as the main source of development within a period, four leading activities are identified to understand multi-literacy development of Francesca: (1) gesture/graphic gesture (drawings which are gesture-like in function) in free play; (2) gesture/speech in make-believe play; (3) speech/graphic speech (drawings as representations of objects) in role playing; and (4) writing/multimodality in rule-based play. These leading activities suggest the social situation of literacy development in which multiple semiotic tools were mediated in her interpersonal communicative contexts which could eventually become psychological tools for her own motives, emotions, inner speech, thoughts and actions. The implications will be addressed in supporting young culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children's literacy development.