I have a friend who loves talking about reading with children as much as I do. She has voracious readers in her house and she comes to me often to report on books that her girls have loved and to brainstorm ideas for new titles to add to their shelves. And then sometimes, she sends […]
Read moreI learned two things today. One… It is very hard to take a good picture of someone else’s feet. Two… Time is moving too quickly. The shoes above are mine. The feet are Caroline’s. My little baby wore my flip flops to school today. The feet that wore my flip flops today, once grew inside […]
Read moreI try my hardest not to dance in front of others but today I have to admit to doing a happy dance at a book fair. The girls have their Spring book fair at school this week and I was thrilled with the selection. There were many, many books appropriate for early readers. These are […]
Read moreI have a list of things that I will start doing someday. Someday when I have more time. You know the list. I’m pretty sure we all have one. Mine includes filling photo albums, eating more dark leafy greens and reading the newspaper. Fortunately, until that day comes, Rob helps me with one of my […]
Read moreSometimes people (and by people, I might mean myself) worry that their children are reading ‘below their level’. Why is she reading something so easy? Why is she re-reading? Why isn’t she challenging herself? Last week, I had gum surgery to repair my poor receding gums. For the past few days, I’ve been in a […]
Read moreI needed a statistic this week for an article I am writing. I turned to a fascinating book, Creating Lifelong Readers Through Independent Reading, to find it and found the numbers I needed and more. I was searching for the decline in ‘reading for pleasure’ seen over the years. But don’t fear-the story I was writing […]
Read moreIt might have been a bedtime-delaying tactic. But I’ll take it. You see, Katherine and I just spent a good fifteen minutes playing a spontaneous alphabet game. We are in the middle of the latest in our favorite series, Gooney Bird on the Map. During our reading tonight, Gooney Bird and her classmates matched the first […]
Read moreI was talking with a neighbor this morning about the amazing-ness of her two year old twins. Born at 32 weeks, each weighing under four pounds, they show no developmental signs of their early beginnings. When I asked my neighbor why she thought they were doing so remarkably well she said, “Well, we read to […]
Read moreSomething funny is happening in our house. Katherine is beginning to say, “That’s a boring book.” At first I panicked. Initially, I couldn’t figure out what was and what wasn’t. Sometimes they were old favorites and sometimes brand new titles she hadn’t seen before. Sometimes they were based in reality and sometimes they were totally […]
Read moreWith summer approaching and fear of the summer slide settling in, I am getting lots of questions about how to help young readers. Sometimes, I think people are looking for the perfect answer. Some type of magical response that can only come from a specialist. Something that they, as parents are missing. In fact, the […]
Read more