Reading in our house isn't a task to be done instead its a love to be nurtured. My daughter started "reading" at age 20 months. She would often plop down on the couch with a book and read the pictures, if she knew the story she would try to read to me. By age five she demanded I teach her to read so we started homeschool kindergarten and in six weeks she was reading Dick and Jane books by herself. Seeing her face as she connected sounds with letters and letters with words was exciting for both of us and I loved building her little library of books.
Now at age nine E is reading Charlotte's Web, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and Black Beauty she will throw in a quick read like Junie B. but she is enjoying the bigger books because they have more adventures and more detail that hold her interest longer. For about five years now her Grandma has been reading to her a couple times a week, I am pretty much left out of the read-aloud time because "Grandma does it better" but I don't mind how can I scoff at their time together. The Five Little Peppers, Little Women and Little House on the Prairie series have all been read so they have moved onto The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe series this summer.
With summer comes reading contests and E is taking part in three right now each requiring a different number of books. I told her if she wanted to do that many contests she couldn't cheat and put the same books on each list so she collected a nice big stack of books and got started. Watching her fill those lists makes me proud because of our hard work five years ago she is now able to create her own fun and use those books to travel through time and to other countries without any prodding from me. Conversations about dragons and their ability to breath fire or if its possible for a family to really adopt a mouse instead of a human child are just normal to us and many times I have seen disappointment in her eyes when friends don't share her interest in these topics. That is when I remind her that the ability to read is very different from the love for reading and we need to teach others that words and books are treasures never to be wasted.
Now at age nine E is reading Charlotte's Web, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and Black Beauty she will throw in a quick read like Junie B. but she is enjoying the bigger books because they have more adventures and more detail that hold her interest longer. For about five years now her Grandma has been reading to her a couple times a week, I am pretty much left out of the read-aloud time because "Grandma does it better" but I don't mind how can I scoff at their time together. The Five Little Peppers, Little Women and Little House on the Prairie series have all been read so they have moved onto The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe series this summer.
With summer comes reading contests and E is taking part in three right now each requiring a different number of books. I told her if she wanted to do that many contests she couldn't cheat and put the same books on each list so she collected a nice big stack of books and got started. Watching her fill those lists makes me proud because of our hard work five years ago she is now able to create her own fun and use those books to travel through time and to other countries without any prodding from me. Conversations about dragons and their ability to breath fire or if its possible for a family to really adopt a mouse instead of a human child are just normal to us and many times I have seen disappointment in her eyes when friends don't share her interest in these topics. That is when I remind her that the ability to read is very different from the love for reading and we need to teach others that words and books are treasures never to be wasted.
