Over the last few days, I have read "the Very Hungry Caterpillar" to my son several times, it seems to be his latest favourite book. When we get to the page with the butterfly he literally shivers with excitement! I always loved it too. Forty years and still going strong, so that says a lot. So here's the thing...my boy is 2 1/4 and quite a talker already, he parrots what we say all the time...and yesterday I noticed that he was "reading" the book himself. He said "moon" and "egg" as he pointed to them, "slice of cheese," "wamermelon," and "saudos" on the page with all the food, again pointing to the pictures. And then "fat caterpillar, hungy anymore"..."pwetty butterfy"!
So...what's going on here? He is clearly learning to associate the words that I read with the pictures that he sees on the page, and is able to imitate what I read. How wonderful to be able to watch that emerging language and literacy, all happening before my eyes.
I didn't learn to read until I was 8 years old, because the school I went to believed that children will learn to read when they are ready...well, I did learn eventually, but not without feelings of inadequacy from being around children from other schools who were already fluent readers, while I was still struggling with the whole thing. In the meantime, I memorised my favourite books. I was able to recite, cover to cover, several different books. I don't know exactly how it happened, but when I look back on it, one day I just suddenly knew that the words on the page were the words that I was reciting, and then I wasn't reciting them anymore, I was actually reading! It's interesting to watch my son doing the same thing, learning the words that go with the pictures and repeating them...I will be very interested to watch him learning to actually read!
So, on to our trip to the library the other day... Miss Missy loves to read, and can polish of a book in a couple of nights or so. So, we get to the library, and what does she say? "There's no books here, Mum" What nonsense! We go to a fairly large community library, in fact it is one of the biggest in Christchurch, they have plenty of books! But she will come away with only one or two books, if we're lucky. I find this rather frustrating, as I know that they will certainly be read within a week. I'm not exactly sure when it started, but it seems to be linked with her moving from picture books to chapter books. She now refuses to read books that I recommend to her (fair enough, what would Mum know?) but she also seems to be unwilling to read anything that is not in a series or by an author that she has not already read. This is so limiting! I know that there are many wonderful books to read for kids, I've read plenty of them myself, over the years, and I know that there are lots of wonderful books recently published that I haven't yet read. But here we will be at the library, and if there are no Tilly's Pony Tales, or Stacey Gregg books on the shelves, she says there are no books here! I wonder if this is typical of her age (9)? I've been thinking that I should try and get her to talk to the librarian about what to read, they may know some really good pony books that she hasn't yet read, and perhaps she'll listen to the librarian when she won't listen to me. I just hope that she starts to expand her book horizons soon!
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