Tag: reading

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Bedtime Reading

Bedtime is hard. Even when things are going relatively smoothly, it’s hard. There’s the sometimes bath, the wrestling into pajamas, the teeth brushing, the choosing of the stories, the arguing over the stories and the reading of the stories. Then there’s the tucking in and, of course, the delay tactics. Everyone’s exhausted, especially me. But every once in a while I insist on picking out the books so I can better enjoy the time spent discovering literature with my children. No offense, Dino Hockey, since you’re single-handedly teaching my son to read, but this is better:

The Engineer
by A. A. Milne

Let it rain!

Who cares?

I’ve a train

Upstairs,

With a brake

Which I make

From a string

Sort of thing,

Which works

In jerks,

‘Cos it drops

In the spring,

Which stops

With the string,

And the wheels

All stick

So quick

That it feels

Like a thing

That you make

With a brake,

Not a string . . .

So that’s what I make,

When the day’s all wet.

It’s a good sort of brake

But it hasn’t worked yet.

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Byron Barton’s “The Three Bears” Best Toddler Book Ever

There are a lot of books being marketed to young children out there. Many are based on popular kids shows — forget about these. Many are classic stories we remember from our own childhood — these are often nice. And then there are the fairy tales — be careful with these. Too often a publisher will put out a shoddy rendition of a fairy tale figuring that the story will sell itself. The abridged story will be poorly constructed and the illustrations barely passable. There is no joy in these stories.

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A Good Read

DAILY SNACK

Sitting on the floor with a book in his lap, his head tilts toward hers. He runs his fingers across the page and talks quietly under his breath. Smiling, he turns the page again and continues the story. Her head bobs up and down, eyes fixed on the page, mouth gnawing on her rubber giraffe. Brother and sister. My heart soars.

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Baby’s First Reading: Pretending to Read and Signs of Readiness

Here is my very first post, and I’m already foregoing any real information or insight in order to boast about my boy. I left him strapped in his stroller at the bottom of the stairs while I ran up to fetch some last minute item. Returning, I find that he’s picked up the “notice of filming” flyer left on the steps and is loudly and enthusiastically pretending to read from it. When I ask if he’s reading, he gives me a huge grin and then drags his finger under the words while babbling all the more eagerly. My boy is not quite 18 months old and it is only in the past 3 or 4 months that he’s really started to enjoy being read to. So I am blown away by both the pretending in itself and the attention to the printed word. (There was only solid text on this paper.) And, really, it was just unbelievably cute.

I did some very preliminary research (ie. Google search) to find out if there is some expected time-line for this kind of behaviour. All I found, though, was that pretending to read normally happens by age 3. And, elsewhere, that pretending to read is a sign of reading readiness in school age children. (Obviously, we are not pretending in quite the same way!)

I do know that it’s so easy for us proud parents to latch on to all kinds of things as signs of advanced skills. (And there’s nothing wrong with that. I know my boy is bright, even if he’s not quite as sophisticated as I sometimes imagine.) By most accounts, though, most kids are caught up with one another by 3 or so and there’s really no clear advantage to early talking. At my boy’s age, too, I need to remember that while I know how much he talks, he’s often quiet around others. And their kids are quiet around me.

Despite the variations, the rate at which all kids learn language comprehension and verbal communication in the 2nd year just floors me. It also means that I’m going to have to watch what I say!