Big Girl Books

I feel like I post about Little Dude all the time. I guess because I'm home with him all day and get to see everything that he does - good or bad! Tomorrow is GG's big friend party (send happy pills ASAP please!!!) and I wanted to post something about her un-birthday related.


I spent many many hours trying to teach her to read. I started reading at least a bedtime story to my kids from a very early age. It's really paid off because now they both love books! When GG was 4 she started to show interest in reading. She could recognize her name, Mom, Dad, her brother's name, and a few words from Hop on Pop. I tried and tried to teach her to read resulting in many screams and tears to no avail. Then one day about half way through Kindergarten, it's like someone flipped a switch and, voila! She could read.

Over the past few months I have been trying to encourage her to read chapter books. I think because there are so many more words and the actual word "chapter" she was intimidated. A few weeks ago she began reading Sideways Stories from Wayside School (one of my childhood favs!). She would glance at her growing collection of chapter books and finally she picked up a Junie B. Jones book!




We are now obsessed with everything about Junie B.!

I've actually had to tell her to put the books away and go to sleep. I love the fact that she loves to read. What I don't love is when she stays up late reading and is then miserable after school. And Little Dude only makes it worse!

One great thing about reading is that her school does Accelerated Reader. This is where a child reads a book, takes a quiz on it, and gets points. Like most contests at her school, food is the motivating factor. I don't necessarily agree with using brownies and ice cream to get a child to do things, but in this case, it really does work. And if a classroom gets one ice party a year, I don't think it is all that detrimental.

Anywho, classes that reach the goal of completing X number of quizzes with an average of at least %80 get a party and/or a special prize. I do believe there are contest within the classrooms as well. Like the top 3 quiz takers get special prizes, like a gift certificate or a cool pencil. Like we need another pencil!!!!!

GG takes 2 or 3 quizzes every week and does well on all of them! I am so proud of her and I really hope that her reading habit continues into adulthood. As long as she doesn't have her nose in a book while walking. She's clumsy like me and that can only end in disaster!


Until next time...

Counting down til post 100 - keep an eye out. Hopefully I can come up with something really awesome to post!

Also, look for details about the upcoming