The Joy of Reading

He has his Nerf gun close at hand, should it be needed in the night.

In a couple of months he will be six.

It was about a yr ago that we began the journey to teach him how to read. We used “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.” I had tried it once before, maybe 6 months prior, and gave up after about a week, as he was not "getting it".

His sister pretty much taught herself to read when she was 3 years old, so I had never really had to teach anyone how to read and I was pretty apprehensive. Seems like half the battle of learning is won, once the child learns how to read - and I just didn't know how it was gonna go with little brother.

When we tried the reading lesson book the second time around, he caught on. What a relief! As we neared the end of the 100 easy lessons – I was getting so tired of the lame stories and so we moved on to "real" books. His reading kept improving and he was excited about reading. He would come to me and ask for "reading lessons".

Even though he had been reading for months, one day he asked me to read him a book. I told him he could read it himself. He was surprised. He said he didn’t realize that he knew how to read. He thought that since he was still having “reading lessons” (what I called his reading out loud to me practice) he still couldn't really read. I informed he was already reading. Well since then he has ventured more and more to read on his own. It has been so fun to see him scrunched up on the couch with a book that he is actually reading.

Shortly before bed tonight he was reading and didn't want to put away his book. As he went downstairs to stay goodnight to dad, he was carrying his book and reading it (thankfully he managed to not fall down the stairs). He was still reading it as he came upstairs and a few minutes later I found him laying on his tummy on his bed - still reading.