Little reader boy

(Note: I apparently never published this post when I wrote it a couple of weeks ago.)

Like most kids, Ethan likes to do things at his own pace. And when he decides he’s ready, boom … it happens. That’s how potty training went: He saw the pullups in the store, decided he didn’t want to wear diapers any more and shortly thereafter, he stopped wearing diapers (at least during the day).

He has been “reading” for a while now – things like street signs and words here and there. But if we said anything about him starting to read, or asked him to read something, most of the time he would get upset and stop.

Yesterday, that changed. He got to bring home a “book bag” from school. These bags (this is our first one) have a book and items related to the story inside. The idea is to get kids involved in acting out the story (it even comes with a suggestion card for activities). Ethan happened to pick a bag with a book about growing vegetable soup. It came with its own veggies, and a “recipe” for growing soup.

He sat down with John and promptly read the entire book with almost no help. He stumbled over a couple of words, but was working on sounding them out, rather than relying on us to fill in the blanks. (I, of course, was a little jealous to have missed this performance, but what can you do.)

When I got home, I asked if he would read the book to me again (fully expecting him to say no), and he did. He has trouble with contractions (who wouldn’t as a new reader), and occasionally just looks at the first letter and puts in the word he thinks is coming, rather than actually looking at the word there. But he read the whole book to me.

So we’ll have to see if he continues to be willing to read, but I suspect that he will soon realize the benefit of being able to actually read stories to himself, and there will be no turning back. Which means we’ll never get him out of his new fort.