She’s laughing. I’m laughing. Her dad’s laughing. We’re all laughing.
It’s summer and I go up to my brother and his family annually to release, relax, relate…and especially after this hectic school year, it is warranted.
My niece, Annie, reads everything. Since she was younger, we have instilled in her the habit of reading everything. I love about 276 miles away from her, so I’d have to be informed of her reading exploits in school. All the awards she would rack up and all the books she’s been reading.
(Yes, she’s been through the entire Harry Potter and Bluford Series).
Yes, yes, we played the obligatory License plate games, read street signs, read the ingredients on the back of products, and read the instructions to everything. Our family had created a reading monster.
Now, our little Annie is attending the University of Central Florida in August. She has her Associates of Arts degree right out of high school already, she’s receiving several scholarships, and she has graduated in the top of her class.
So why were we laughing? Well, Annie brought up a story of something she remembered as she was growing up. A story about mispronouncing words and our making fun of her ‘cute’ pronunciations like Wadah, instead of Water and Batah instead of Batter.
Her story reminds me of https://tinyurl.com/QUICKREADS1
[a product from my store] where she practiced her reading and I developed it for struggling and developing readers like our Annie was – our little reader.
10 really short passages for kids to practice during the summer, after school, at the beginning of class, if they are struggling readers, or after they’ve completed assignments early. It has some wonderful questions and the opportunities to answer questions and then discussion questions that we followed up on with her; fun times.
Now we were just having fun as a family that liked to learn, but Annie was digesting every minute. Even though she was spending time with her family and uncle, she was also learning to love reading.
She [and I] will always remember these moments; these summers with our little reader.
What do you do with your little reader to move them along through the summers or throughout the year in general? Whether it be from hanging at the pool chilling at a friends house, eating out, roughing it at summer camp, let’s find time to have our littles READ.
The Angry Teacher 