Here is AJ's modern day sampler where he has been practicing his alphabet writing skills on this magna-doodle board. So far I had observed him writing one or two things here or there, but the other day he took this to bed with him for his quiet time and came out with the whole alphabet minus a missing N. AJ has been working on his letters at school and I have been trying to teach him some basics of reading at home using a book I bought from Amazon called something like Teach Your Child To Read in Ten Minutes a Day. Reading to my kids has been my favorite thing about parenting from the beginning. It is the 30 minutes a day when they are all quiet and not inflicting physical pain on one another or coloring my walls with permanent marker. I love seeing their interest in the characters and stories and hearing them repeat a line from a book as they play or talking about a favorite plot.
I decided to try to teach AJ to read after talking to a colleague at the office who was finding that kindergarten now expects kids to come in with some readings basics and it is better if they can come in with some ability to read basic books. So I started off doing this project with a feeling of obligation that it was one more thing like soccer lessons or tae kwon do that I was doing because it would be good for him, not necessarily because it would be enjoyable. But as I read the book, it talks about how giving your child the gift of reading is one of the greatest gifts and joys you can give, and this struck home for me. As a kid I always had a book with me and read for the pure joy of reading the story, and it would be so neat to be able to pass that same love for reading on to my kids. So far AJ and I are enjoying the lessons quite a bit and it is going better than I had anticipated in terms of being fun. I am not sure I will be ready to give up our nightly reading sessions in a year or so when he is able to read to himself, but the pride he has in figuring out how to read is so heartwarming to see that it outweighs any of that.
Tonight Pops and Susan came over for dinner, so I had AJ read a few words for them to give him some additional encouragement and feedback that this is a neat thing. He read PAT, HAT and TAP all with his Chicago accent on the As. I read somewhere that people tend to speak with the local dialect that they learn when they are about three years old or so and that pronunciation sticks with them for life, so I like that AJ is likely to retain this piece of his Chicago history. Davey is excited to get in on the action, too, and so adds in his random letters and thoughts, singing the alphabet as R, Z, Q, X, K! As he did when he was learning his colors, Davey says his answers with such certainty that it is almost convincing. It makes me laugh every time now.
