So I’ll not bother.
Morningtime stuff included dealing with chickens – definitely 2 cockerels and 5 hens in the chicks -woohoo. They’re doing well outside and a mini-integration with me setting one free for a while under supervision proved okay. Our plan is to keep one cockerel and four of the hens and to sell the other cock and one hen as a pair. I did a fair bit of laundry – washing, drying, dealing with my maverick washing lines which keep falling down on me, and giving piles of clean, dry clothes to children to put away in the revelant place / screw up and shove at the back of their wardrobes.
I decided to care about the Summer Reading Game too. I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing really. One the one hand I dislike the whole creating an aura of ‘work’ around reading and the whole rewards thing with the stickers and membership cards. Quite aside from the money and tree felling that goes into producing all that paper I don’t actually want in my house I’d far rather children read books because they love the book that because some carrot is dangled at the end of a stick for them.
But… I know from the other side of the fence that we often see children at work who never otherwise get to share their passion for reading with anyone. I know I personally take responsibility for following up any glimmers with any children I talk to about the Summer Reading Challenge by finding out what they loved about the book they read, talking to them about that genre, that author, other books they have written and how they can order them for free etc. So I know it can be a hook for children into reading too. I guess it’s like star charts – personally I find them abhorent and wouldn’t use them with my own children but I can see a place for them out there.
So, I probably woudn’t even have bothered signing D and S up for it this year but we were in town a few weeks ago and bumped into Sian who I work with and she suggested we do it and the children were up for it. They chose books and I’m conscious that as starters with cards in the box at work I’d rather they now were finishers also. Davies is clearly progressing with his reading, mostly by way of writing really, and he’d chosen a couple of books to read himself. Scarlett is still adamant she can’t read at all so she chose books she’d like read to her.
So this morning we gathered them all up. I re-read Scarlett’s two choices to them both – the wonderful which is just gorgeous in every way and which I suspect she had as one of her choices last year too but is one of her favourites and she loves the low text, high illustration impact of it.
Davies had or a version thereof, not sure which copy as there are just so many. And which he sat and read fairly fluently to me. He’s definitely at the stage where he can read but needs to still think about most words before he reads them, although he does then go back and read each sentence with feeling which is nice :).
Books at the ready we walked into Lancing. We took our litter walk alleyway route and Davies and Scarlett decided to count the litter items they saw. Clearly starting with zero six weeks ago when we did our litter collecting, they reached 116 before we got to the library. They were a bit disheartened but if anything I suspect it’s spurred them on to want to do it again rather than having them wonder what the point of their effort was. I’m very proud of them :).
At the library they sat and chatted to the volunteer teens about their books and then chose their next two books each and a couple of dvds. We had a look in the charity shops and Davies got a chemistry set that I’ve been eyeing for a couple of weeks but decided against incase he wasn’t really interested. Turns out he was and we brought it home today. It was bulky and heavy and I sort of wished I’d bought it before when I had the car really 😆
Back home I made popcorn and we sat and watched which was utterly charming. It is based on a book which we have read (among other of his books actually) and was just lovely. We also watched the making of bit afterwards.
Davies and Scarlett wanted to play outside so they did so while I did nothing in particular – might well have been mostly playing bejeweled blitz actually 😉 Oh, and an online food shop order. And more washing.
Dinnertime for the children, Ady came home having bought a food smoker at a cut down bargain price. Davies and Scarlett watched Invasion of the Body Scratchers which we’d recorded for them last night. I read a couple of chapters of Mr Gum – we’re now on the second reading of the last book and it was bedtime for them.
Several hours later it was curry time for us – we have a lot of averaging back out again from getting dinner on the table for Joyce and Bob at 8pm! 😉
we’ve just finished the reading challenge for the year, I’m never convinced about the incentive of a few smelly stickers and a certificate either but Aprilia seems to like it!
Comment by tbird anni — 04 August 2009 @ 3:59 pm
Oh, Rosie’s Walk. Ahhh. I just LOVED that stage of reading. We probably owned far too many books like that, but *I* couldn’t resist them. Esp loved that one.
Comment by Joyce — 05 August 2009 @ 10:54 am
I don’t think it motivates her reading, but it is an excellent way of getting her to think and summarise a book to an adult she doesn’t know, and to make a decision as to which one she prefers and why. Decision making being a weak area ;-).
So it helps to develop critical thinking processes and communication skills. It’s essentially a presentation.
Comment by Michelle — 05 August 2009 @ 6:41 pm