Reading Is Fun

I've been telling my kids since I felt they could comprehend it, "If you can read, you can do anything". It's true. Think about it. Back during slavery, they wouldn't allow the slaves to have access to books or learn to read for fear they would become educated. It was a way of keeping control. So I explain to them, "if you can read, you can do anything".

Well they are six now and while we've been working hard with them, reading to them forever as well as working with them on spelling, sounding out words, etc, you can't push it. If you push it, they can become frustrated and shut down. Then they'll see it as more of a chore and not learn to enjoy reading. As a parent or as anyone who is teaching someone something, you really have to walk that fine line of knowing when to push someone and when to back off.

Well, it turns out that Mitch can read. We'd be walking in a store and he would just point to a sign and read it. Or we'd be at the kitchen table and he would point to a magazine and read a few words. Turns out, that while at parent teacher conferences a little ways back, his teacher gave us a list of words each Kindergartner should know by the end of the school year. He knows them all. I'm not saying he's reading novels or anything, but this is a child who hasn't exactly done things on what we would call the "normal" timetable. He never crawled. He didn't walk until he was 19 months old. He was about 6 before being fully potty-trained. Granted the kid has had it a little rough, so we were thinking more often than not he would do whatever it was at his own pace.  Well, I'm glad if something was relatively accelerated, it was this.

And he's excited about it too. A new book from school every week and he's excited to read it at night. We get them both new books all the time and they make it part of their routine before going to sleep to make sure we read at least 1 book. And, now that Mitch is doing well reading and how much praise he's getting, Max is starting to step up his game.

So hopefully, perhaps by the end of the calendar year they'll be reading books to us instead of the other way around. And once that happens, it's a whole new world.

Update: I wrote this awhile ago and never posted it. Since then, Max is definitely better at reading, but just shy about reading out loud. Mitch however will read out loud to himself or to anyone. He'll read anything including magazines, shopping circulars, it doesn't matter. He actually calms down at night but taking out his flashlight and reading a book to himself, out loud before going to bed. I couldn't be more proud.

I keep forgetting..

You started to sing that Michael McDonald song, didn't you?  Go on, admit it.. Sorry about that..

Anyway, remember in Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery where Austin sleeps with the Italian bird Alotta, Alotta Fagina?  And when he tells Vanessa she explains to him he's going to be very lonely. Austin then spends the entire night drinking Tab so he can stay awake and tries to figure out everything he's missed in the last 30 years.. He's missed a lot including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of apartheid and the US putting a man on the moon.

Well, that's where this post comes in. One of the boys is keeping a Night Sky Journal and at the end of the month each child will compare their Night Sky Journal to what they see in the sky during the day. Cool idea. I just wish it was the fall or spring so it wasn't so damn cold out when we're standing out there looking at the sky..  But I digress..

We're charting the phases of the moon so he can see how they change as the month progresses.. And we look at some of the constellations and talk about what he sees. Currently the most notable fascination is with Orion the Hunter and his infamous belt. So we go back in and draw, color and write down what we see.

As we're looking up at the sky the other night, I hear "I'm going go to the moon one day". I said ok, you can become an astronaut. Did you know we've actually walked on the moon? They must have gotten whiplash with how quickly their heads spun around and like a minion asked "whaaaaaat?" I said yeah, on July 20th, 1969 (and no I did not have to look that up; Mr. Macini, my Space and Astronomy teacher in 9th grade did a really good job) Neil Armstrong became the first human being ever to walk on the moon. And after him there were 11 other people who walked on the moon. They thought that was the coolest thing ever. (Another cool fun fact is that my uncle was one of the engineers who worked on the guidance system of the Saturn V rocket that took Apollo 11 to the moon. True story)

But as parents we need to remember that our kids don't know everything we know (contrary to what they think). There are the obvious things like walking, feeding themselves, potty training, etc that we clearly need to teach them (see previous blog called Blank Slate)..  But the other cool stuff like we've walked on the moon that we take that knowledge for granted, they have no idea. You just never know what information about which subject is going to pique their interest. And then you never know where that may lead. Information is power.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f_DPrSEOEo