My children can’t read yet. They can recognize letters and they know the sounds those letters make, but they’re not reading yet. They’re not reading in part because we’re not trying to make them read. I don’t know if they would be able to read some or more if we had sat at home during the afternoons, drilling letters and sounds and asking them to do practice in what would ultimately lead to reading. Academics will come, but a love of learning can be squashed pretty early by taking learning—something that’s natural that all children want to do—and making it compulsory.
Have you seen a child push a toy broom on the floor or get a cloth and try to wipe up beside you because they see you doing so? Are they doing it because sweeping and cleaning is fun or because children innately are driven to learn? Nurturing a natural desire and love of learning is one of the tenants of a Montessori education. And while I’m not black and white on what is and what isn’t “true Montessori,” I agree that it’s more fun to want to do a math problem because you want to feel successful at solving the ferociously difficult quadratic equation than it is to grumble and moan through homework because it’s, “a terrible punishment of childhood.”
Wow, that was one unexpected soap box I just got off of. This blog has a way of sending me down lines of mental thought I had no idea I was even conjuring up in my brain. When I started the paragraph the idea wasn’t even in my mind and then as I rounded off the last sentence I looked back and thought, “where in hell did that come from?” At any rate, let’s talk about reading books.
So my children can’t read. At all. But they love books and they love books to be read to them. Lately my children have been wanting to, “read the book.” My husband has been nurturing this for a while by reading more simple books to them as well as using his finger to trace under the words as he reads them. We had tried this some time back but they were too young and didn’t even care that those squiggles actually meant something. But now they know they mean something and that something can be figured out if you can read.
I pulled out a collection of the level one reader books we got from other friends in the past and each child “read” a book at bed tonight. I would point to the words, read them and then they would read them a second time while I pointed to the words. They are really going to like reading when they learn how.
The Big Boy Update: My neighbor’s girls had gotten this Aquabeads craft thing. It involves taking small plastic beads, putting them on a small, hexagonal grid very meticulously and then connecting them together. It’s slow and doing a small project like a heart takes concentration and time. My son saw the little beads and immediately wanted to do something. My neighbor, ever the positive person that she is, said, “what would you like to make?” My son said, “I want to make a Viking killing a bear.” My neighbor and I laughed out loud. We couldn’t stop laughing. By the time we stopped laughing my son had found a tool belt and a plastic drill set to play with in the tool box.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter is responsible for the title of this blog post. She’s the reason I got out all the level one readers so we could read books together tonight. While we were reading the second book, my son asked me a question and he and I got off subject. My daughter sighed heavily and said, “can we get back to the book?”
Fitness Update: I ran eight miles in the house today. Don’t even ask, it’s a lot of figure eights around the main floor of the house. I get a lot of television listened in. I wouldn’t called it ‘watching television’ because I only catch a small portion of the show as I jog by. It was the only opportunity I was going to have to exercise today and I couldn’t leave the children. My husband was out on a bike ride with friends. I hear he had a great twenty mile ride.
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