A work day for me today. I struggled to get up and was slightly fragile first thing due to an excess of birthday cheer last night. I had to snap out of it rather rapidly though as it was mad crazy busy at work with small children coming in to either retell every single word of the books they’d read in high, enthusiastic voices, or reluctantly squeeze a couple of heavily prompted words out – both quite hard work.
I’m not convinced about the SRG to be honest. I hate the idea of incentivising reading, I loathe the stickers / medal / certificate hullaballoo of the whole thing. I cringe at the parent who literally dragged her reluctant child to sit in front of me last week, who clearly didn’t want to talk to me about the books or get any sort of positive experience out of it. I cringe equally at the mother today who scornfully told her child ‘you don’t want to do that, it’s for babies‘. The children who sail through it reading books in record time are the regular library users anyway. But then every so often you get a chink of light shining through when a child really enthuses about a book they’ve read and get pleasure out of sharing that experience with someone, or talks about the wonderful descriptive language in the book, or raves about the illustrations. Today I had a boy who had read all the Spiderwick Chronicles and was now working his way through a trilogy of teengae books (he was only 9) and was so passsionate about the one he’s just finished I was tempted to borrow it :).
I had a dramatic and potentially embarassing ‘wardrobe malfunction’ when the wraparound skirt I was wearing lost it’s button. It happened at teabreak time so I borrowed a safety pin from a colleague and thought I was safe. The safety pin proved a failure however and the skirt de-wrapped itself in spectacular fashion as I walked from the enquiry desk to the counter. It was not witnessed life on television or by the worlds’ press like Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction but it did create a ripple of excitement at the library 😆
I had a bit of a reservation frenzy last week at work and ordered in all the dvds catalogued as ‘natural history’ so today there was a huge pile of ‘walking with monsters’ ‘walking with beasts’ ‘walking with cavemen’ titles as well as various Raging Planet ones about volcanoes, thunderstorms and more. We have a lot of time in the car over the next week though so I’m sure they’ll all get watched and the children will get duly educated by them ;). They fell on the ‘walking with monsters’ one with delight and watched the whole disc of 3 back to back episodes in hushed wonder and have been recounting it to each other ever since. 🙂
Ady was home with the children this morning and then at Mum and Dad’s request he dropped them off at their house for the afternoon. Strange things are happening with my parents and they were both home today. The children had a nice time though and had been to the park not long before I arrived to collect them. I stayed for a cup of tea and then we came home.
Big news here today is that we have had our first two eggs from the chicks. Not sure whether it is two from the same hen or whether two or the three have started laying but very excited to have second generation eggs from hens that hatched from eggs our own chickens laid. The legacy of the fiesty cockerel lives on – and Scarlett had them for tea :). We currently have 5 hens, one chick too young to tell and one cockerel who is unable to stand up so I’m hoping for the eggs to start coming thick and fast again and paying for their keep.
I carried on with the wallpaper stripping which is now thankfully finished. Davies and Scarlett were abmysmal at going to sleep – again – Scarlett has spent the last 3 nights sleeping in Davies’ room with him which has huge novelty value and always makes for late nights and overtired next days.
I can’t stand the summer reading thing.
1. they all come home with masses of paper and leave it lying around the kitchen, then starts the ‘if you leave this lying around the kitchen I will throw it away’ thing until they take all the bits of it upstairs.
2. those children who just want the stickers read stupidly babyish books just so they can get them (I have one like this)
3. those children who actually read books they want to read (decent sized ones not board books for babies) and can’t do it before we go on holiday get pissed off that *they* didn’t get any stickers last week
4. when they finally do finish they end up with a poxy medal, yet another thing that gets left lying around but I don’t have the heart to throw it away.
Yes, ffs, just read a book because you want to enjoy reading a book!
Comment by Sarah — 08 August 2008 @ 5:35 am
I’ve never liked it. I still bear a grudge from the first year Leo read himself a chapter book and presented his card at the desk to be told he had to read two books before he got anything. Didn’t dent his enthusiasm, though. In fact maybe it was a nice reminder that reading is its own reward.
I echo your feelings about all the *stuff* Sarah. Awful rubbish that no-one cares about in a day or two. A decent library service will sell itself to kids – and everyone else.
Sadly, our library service is rather spectacularly rubbish at actually supplying a particular book in anything like a reasonable time frame. I suspect the theft levels are so huge (alarm goes off at the main library every few minutes and no-one investigates) that the catalogue bears only a passing resemblance to the stock. This is frustrating for kids (like mine) who get into a particular series or author and can’t pursue that properly. I don’t like it either!
Comment by Allie — 08 August 2008 @ 9:25 am