We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
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Saturday, Apr. 29, 2006 - 11:30 P.M.
Magnificent Day
Today was the sort of dayt that Jack seems to like best.
We got up and showered, then went downstairs for breakfast. After breakfast, we did a little laundry and cleaned the kitchen together and then we ran some errrands.
When we got home, we dug holes for some fruit trees and some berry bushes and filled them with water, and then watered the roses while we waited for the water to drain from the new plantings. Jack was, of course, an integral part of every step the of process -- he has his own shovel and he helped us dig out the dirt, and he LOVES to be the one who waters anything.
After we finished, we came back into the house, ceaned up (relizing there was no way we
could make our Beltane gather two hours' drive away because it was starting in 15 minutes.
Oops.
Since that wasn't possible -- and we were pretty tired, we made dinner and then Jack and I sat down to try something new. A few weeks ago, I'd bought a copy of Little Bear by Elsa Holmelund Minarik. The words are simple and there aren't too many to a page...and more to the point, Jack had never read it! I thought it might be time to see if he was ready to move his new reading skills into books. Then life got busy and there simple wasn't time -- but tonight we finally had time.
Jack was a little hesitant at first -- in his mind reading books was evidently more "complicated" than what he already knows how to do. I coached him to sound out each unfamiliar word, and then when he came to the end of a sentence, I reread it for him, so he could hear the story, while having his interpretation of the words validated.
He caught on quickly, and REALLY enjoyed it -- by the third page he was using intonation with familiar words like "Oh!" and "Hurray!", though of course he really had to work at new words -- and there were one or two per page. (Which seemed just about perfect!)
Little Bear is a chapter book of sorts -- it has several stories about Little Bear. Jack was working so hard that long before he reached the end of the first story, he was exhausted and getting silly. Fortunately, the book is also written in "interludes", (I think Ms. Holmelund Minarik must have been very familiar with how children actually learn to read! Not something I'd noticed before.) so I was able to announce at the end of an interlude that it was time to stop. Jack wanted me to read, so I told him that while Little Bear is for *him* to read, I would read any other of his books to him.
He disappeared upstairs and came back with several of his one word per page books and "read" them to me. I wouldn't have bet that he was reading because a) the books are one word and one picture per page and b) he is way to familiar with th books to say that he is doing anything but parroting -- but I think at some point he may have moved to actually reading them.
By then, dinner was ready, so we set the table and sat down to eat. Jack had a few croutons but he had already eaten while we made dinner, and the daal was really too spicy to appeal to him, so he continued to focus on reading. Obviously we weren't done yet.
I pulled out a book of "spelling puzzles" and photocopies a couple of pages for Jack to work on. (When Jack can actually write the answers himself, I'll probably have him do them again, in the book.) he did those with great relish -- and I was delighted that there were several he couldn't recognize. (He doesn't know what a bottle of ink is, for instance) so Rod and I could show him some alternative ways to problem solve.
He eventually exhausted himself and fell asleep on Dad's shoulder -- he was too tired even to ask to go to bed!
The timing is actually pretty decent. Day after tomorrow, we're boarding a five hour flight to Amsterdam -- I think if Little Bear and Jack's first reader comes with us, we will be just fine. He worked around four hours this evening, and it was up to him to keep going.
Of course, it also means we'll need a ball for him to chase around at airports -- he's going to need some exercize.
Oh, and speaking of which -- we're going to be away for a couple of weeks. I'll blog if I can, but no promises.
