Two big snow storms rocked our area last week. Our kids missed about a week of school. We lost power for our home, as did thousands of other families. It has been a great time to have children who are not addicted to electronic entertainment. Our sons easily entertained themselves by building with Legos, sledding, reading, playing board games and more. For me, the first few days were an adventure. We played backgammon, shoveled and talked. We snuggled under covers and read together – that is something I will always remember. We are a house of readers, but we don’t usually snuggle under the covers – all four of us – and read together. We took turns reading picture books, some of our favorites, and some new ones we had borrowed from the library. And then a magical thing happened. Over these snow days, with extra time on his hands, one of my sons made a great leap in his reading. He has been reading for about two years, but he read his first book for which he needed a book mark. He was so proud of himself – you could hear it in his voice and see it in his face – the satisfaction of turning that last page and reaching the end of the story. He read three long books over this past week, and by the last night his brother – now ready for the challenge himself - picked up a longer book and started to read it. Yup – he’s now got a book mark, too.
I just talked with my sister-in-law. Her family had “D.E.A.R” time (Drop Everything and Read) during the power outage, and her youngest daughter made the leap to truly seeing herself as a reader. She used a book mark as well, for the first time last week. Two big snow storms with power outages have helped a few budding readers blossom, giving them a chance to raise their skill and their pleasure to the next level. I am guessing there are others out there who also enjoyed this success, but we’ll never know for sure. For now, I’ll just delight in the image of hundreds of thousands of children going “unplugged” and discovering new ways to entertain themselves.
The kids will tell us when they are ready for certain milestones. If you (or their teacher) had everyone in the class making bookmarks or reading longer books as part of the “series” it wouldn’t have happened when they were ready for it. I know this is a home example, but it speaks volumes to letting the kids guide the instruction and not the other way around!
That’s so cool, thanks for the great story. We love snow too.