Bookworm-in-Training

K.,

Jamie spent the past year attending Half-Day Kindergarten, specifically 8 am to 11 am, or even more precisely, FOR NOT *#^$-ing LONG ENOUGH! I’m sure most of their classroom time during the months of December through April was spent struggling into or out of their snow-pants and boots. Unsurprisingly, Jamie’s otherwise excellent elementary considers kindergarten a non-academic year. Well, duh, what kind of academics can you teach during the remaining 15 minutes? The teachers focus on basic gross and fine motor skills (pasting, cutting, holding a pencil, walking, talking, wiping one’s own bottom), as well as letters, numbers, and simple math. (So simple Mr. Ed could stomp it out.)

When My Better Half (hopefully!) finishes up his PhD sometime this fall, we’ve been browbeaten by Jamie to move back near his grandparents in “Nohio”. I’ve warned Jamie that his future first grade classmates in Nohio will have attended all-day kindergarten and are probably already reading. However, he finds this less motivating than the computer My Better Half has promised him when Jamie learns to read. (Side question for My Better Half: when has someone learned to read? After Hop on Pop or War and Peace?)

To earn that $50 Craigslist computer, Jamie and I have been working through a book called Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Boy, do I wish it were one easy lesson. After a sporadic few months effort, we are on lesson 28. Yesterday it took him about ten minutes and both of us near to tears, but Jamie read: “An ant is fat. It can sit and eat.” With each lesson there is a simple sentence or two to read, followed by a cartoon depicting the content. The cartoon in this case was a fat ant sitting in a wooden chair eating an ice cream cone. Jamie struggled over each and every word, finally earning a peek at the cartoon. His first question was “…but where’s the can?”

I find this business of teaching someone to read perplexing. It comes very easily to some kids (Thomas, My Better Half, etc), and they essentially teach themselves before even starting primary school. Others, such as Jamie and myself, must actually be taught to read. I’ve realized that yelling at someone repeatedly to JUST SOUND IT OUT, DAMNIT! is not effective teaching. The 100 Easy Lessons book was created by two early literacy experts who realized that most parents have NO idea how to teach someone to read. Their book explains exactly when and what to say. The process is so prescribed in fact, someone could probably write a computer code to recite the parent’s prompts. But then the book would have to be titled “Have a Computer Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, You Lousy Parent.” 

Jamie will learn to read well sooner or later, and if his genetics win out, he’ll quickly become addicted to engineering books, Clive Cussler novels, or historical romance– or some weird genre involving all three. Perhaps he’ll even write them.

Judging by penmanship, a future doctor!

-A.