I'm trying to teach Keaton to read. He's home with me on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. When Sullivan goes down for a nap Keaton and I head to the couch, armed with a bag of books. The books we checked out at the library last week are of the phonetic variety. Lots of rhyming and repetition. The books have pictures on each page...and those pictures (IMHO) are the dumbest idea ever.
Okay, maybe not as dumb as electing W into office...but very, very poorly thought out.
Why do I think this? Let me try to explain...
The first book we started reading is titled "Ike-Ike Rides a Bike" and is the story of...well, it seems to be the story of a clown named Mike but Ike-Ike (a monkey) does make an appearance later in the book.
So.
Mike is a clown. He is riding a unicycle. These two facts have led to my teaching Keaton pretty much nothing in our last two reading sessions. All Keaton can do is ask "Why is the clown named Mike?" "Is that OUR Mike or a different Mike?" "Why is Daddy in the book?" "He's not riding a bike! It only has one tire. Bikes have two tires."
And on and on and on and on....
A month or so ago I had entertained the idea of buying Keaton some superhero learn-to-read books. What was I thinking? Now that I am such a teaching-to-read-or-rather-fending-off-silly-four-year-old-type-questions-rather-than-actually-teaching-anything expert, I can see the folly of my thinking.
Superhero books would not lead to literacy; superhero books would lead to running around the house and jumping off of things and trying to convince your mom that you are NOT using a gun but rather it is just your "power" and doesn't actually shoot although you are making shooting noises while pointing your "power" at things and asking your mom exactly how big are Transformers in real life and are they bigger than Spiderman and HEY is Santa going to bring new Spiderman underwear because you'd rather have Transformer underwear, no wait now you like Iron Man the best so you'd better let Santa know your new preference and then you tell your mom you are going outside to find a spider because today you are finally brave enough to get bit by a spider to see which kind of superhero you will turn into after the bite.
Whew.
Maybe I'll just stick to printing some words out in plain black ink, plain old font, plain white paper?
1 comment:
This is really funny, Patti. I can see Keaton asking all the questions. At the same time, Keaton is retaining the information he is reading. Maybe at school next year, they will have boring books like I read in elementary school--"See Dick run. Oh, oh, see Jane run. See Sally run. See Spot run. Run, Spot, run." Etc..... Who could stay awake through that kind of story?
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