Friday, March 23, 2007

Read to me: the final chapter

Sass and I had almost completely gotten away from reading simple picture books. Our day was focused on reading out school books and our novels, and the picture books had gotten pushed aside. Sass is five, and five-year-old girls like picture books. Just because it's not something that I'd prefer doesn't make it acceptable for me to skip it.

So, picture books were our focus in the Reading Challenge, hosted by Jennifer at Snapshot. As I reported earlier, I was quite pleased with our progress in the Read to Me challenge. We were reading several picture books every day. I was, however, quite tired of reading the same books over and over, and I decided to take a more active role in choosing our picture books.

I am happy to report that Sass was just as pleased as I to add a few new books to the routine. She has now begun to choose books that don't have "Clifford" in the title -- a huge step! At first she chose the ones that I had introduced, probably because they were ones that she remembered reading recently. But after a couple of days, she started choosing ones that had sat neglected in the bookshelf.

It's once again opened her up to reading a variety of books, all for fun. Not because it's part of our schoolwork or the book that she and I are reading together, but because it's what she wants at that moment.

No comments: