Skip to main content

Lessons from my four year old! Choice Matters!

We have an excellent public library in Hickory, North Carolina, the Patrick Beaver Memorial Library. My four year-old son, Lucas, has enjoyed many aspects of the children's wing of the library for some time.  The puppets, touch-screen computers, lego table, puzzles, and bead mazes have kept him entertained and begging to come back.  However, until recently, looking for books has been a combination of me pleading and him running around in the aisles playing peek-a-boo.  Last month we ( when I say we, I mean I) finally settled on three books to take home, great pictures, and decodable words and sight words.  We got the books home, and Lucas didn't care to look at them once.... I was discouraged to say the least.  My husband and I both love to read, and I Lucas enjoys being read to, but he didn't care to take a look at the three books we (I) got from the library at all.


This week, we returned to the library, with baby brother, Griffin.  He too enjoyed the library, and used the little chairs to aid him in his journey to walking independently. Ha! But, this trip was different.  We played Legos, solved puzzles, drove wooden cars on the rug map of the city, and then (I) decided to look for books.  A light bulb went off in my head, as I was trying to coach Lucas into deciding what type of book he might light to look for, and it hit me...the boy loves trains.  I figured out that using the library computer to search for train books while juggling a feisty one-year-old, is no easy task, so we asked for help!  Roxanna was super, and led us right to the treasure that is number 385 in the Dewey decimal system, a number I will probably never forget, Railroad Transportation!  

Lucas was overjoyed!  He picked out 5 books to take home, and proudly carried his library card, while I toted Griffin and the carseat and bags, and Roxanna carried our newly found treasures to the check-out counter.  Lucas couldn't wait until we got home to look at his books, so enjoyed one in the car on the way home. Once home, he proudly shared them with his daddy, and insisted that we read one!

The morning after our library trip the first thing Lucas said after waking up was, "Mommy, let's read one of my train books!"  My response, "Let's do it!"  He was so excited.

So, there it is....  Were these books on his reading level? His instructional level? No.  They were dead center in his interest level!  He's picked up so much vocabulary, and can recognize new words by sight.  He's developed more book and print awareness, story elements, and text features, all at the age of four.    

As a proud supporter and advocate for Daily 5, I taught Lucas the three ways to read a book:
  • Read the pictures
  • Read the words
  • Retell the story
Check him out here retelling on of his books:


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

BreakoutEDU, YES!

Plan. Schedule. Print. Prep. Hide clues. Set locks. Test locks. Double-check clues.  Breathe. Engage. Breakout! I won't sugarcoat this, the process of preparing for my first BreakoutEDU session took me a long time!  (I used a pre-made game, Grammar Guru, it was great by-the-way!) However, every bit of time I spent printing, cutting, re-printing, scanning, and building was WORTH IT! Cyndi Childers, a 6th grade teacher at East Burke Middle School, was looking for something to get her students engaged, and I knew Breakout was just the trick. We ran two simultaneous games in two rooms, with Cyndi facilitating one room and myself in the other.  We had groups about about 12-15 students in each room.  The group size worked, it could have been smaller, but it really wasn't bad at all.   This game has a progression of clue finding, one leading to another, so they were all somewhat forced to be working together on 1-2 clues at once, which I liked.  This help...
5 comments
Read more

September, eesh!

Back to school season is full of events, changes, new people, meetings, and for the Wolfhope family, a periodic fever syndrome for our younger son.  The stress of handling 'all the things' is often tolerable for me, until it's not. I love my job, and the responsibility and the freedom to try and fail, but ultimately succeed. I like knowing how to do things, things that are really kind of over my head, but I think I may be addicted to learning new things. That quest for always knowing more, the love of figuring things out, and the genuine joy I get for solving problems and helping people has really carried me through one of the most eventful Septembers I can remember. But... I'm no superwoman. I have failed, and failed, and failed over and over again. I have let stress and a workload carry-over at home, often distracted, or saying, "I'm almost done." I was overcome with tears, just days prior to my son's surgery date. He's fine. He's a champio...
1 comment
Read more

Blessings and Insomnia

It's 3:24 am and I have been wide awake for a least an hour. It was the coughing that woke me. Not mine but that of my seven year-old. He was diagnosed with influenza A this morning. His three year-old brother was diagnosed with influenza B and is sleeping fitfully next to my husband. Friday, today, will be day five of me staying home with sick kiddos. Two different strains of flu sick kiddos. Super irritable, not so sick that they can't annoy one another, sick kiddos. Super hungry, and attention craving sick kiddos. And in moments, it seems overwhelming, like too much at once.  I have not yet succumbed completely to the stress and exhaustion, and it's because of unyielding grace, understanding, and compassion from both my family and those surrounding my family.  Tuesday night, I went with a bunch of girlfriends to dinner and a movie, and that Brandy wouldn't take "no" for an answer. She knew! Self-care is important, and she made sure I took care of myself. ...
Post a Comment
Read more