I’ve always loved to read. I started reading on my own at age four and just kept going. I almost always have a book with me (particularly now that I have an iPod Touch with the Kindle app), and I often have multiple books going at once. I hope that Baguette will love to read–and she certainly seems to be enjoying it at the moment.
My approach with her is to let her enjoy the book in whatever way she wants to at the moment. We started by reading to her, particularly as part of a nighttime routine (oh, hey, I guess we did have one of those once). Then, she decided that we were not allowed to read to her. She would grab the book out of my or Mr. Sandwich’s hands and move away from us so that she could flip the pages on her own, narrating what she saw on the pages.
Then she started letting us read again–but now she’s open to more approaches. Sometimes we’ll read it carefully page by page. Sometimes we’ll read whatever page she wants to turn to, regardless of order. Sometimes I’ll ignore the text and ask her what she sees on the page. Since we usually read books more than once in a row, we often wind up doing all three in any reading session.
The other night I was in the kitchen, and she was in the living room. I peeked around the corner, and there she was, sitting in the middle of the rug while she flipped through Elmo’s Valentine.
I don’t care whether she reads books in print, or on a tablet, or off the inside of her eyelids if that’s the technology that is in use when she’s older. But I do hope that she always loves to read.
Photo by Mathom, via Flickr.