Lovin' Books! (dedicated to Mimi)

This post is dedicated to Mimi - Benjy's Mom. She has been a huge influence on our kids in the way of "reading". She is a big reader herself and from the beginning of my pregnancy with Reece and on through the boys' baby, toddler and preschool years has been providing our kids with books....and books...and more books. Many of the books on these shelves have come from her and we are thankful for that!

 

Note to everyone else: the rest of this post is a full of a Mommy's pride so....just be warned :)

So, Mimi, I wanted you to see that putting books in the hands of your grandsons has paid off. Reece loves reading - it seems to have come quite naturally for him, in both languages. He has now accepted my challenge to begin reading chapter books. Chase is in the very beginning stages of sounding out words and pulling the concepts together but he is eager. The other night he prayed and asked God to "please help me read". And Pierce loves books. He asks for them regularly before nap and bedtime (sure, I do understand that some of that is a stall tactic - ha!)...but I have often caught him home alone in the mornings just paging through book after book all on his own. He often asks for books about "Jesus" too - I love it! I am thankful that there are now moments when I will simply ask Reece to read to his little brothers and he can do it! Very fun! I took the initiative to record these early reading moments on video because I am learning all too quickly how much these kids learn and transition from one stage of life to another right before my very eyes. I love to capture where they are at and thought this was a great way to share it with you...

This first video is Pierce and I reading his very favorite book - "The Giving Tree" - he requests it over & over & over again.  He surprised me one day when he began filling in the blanks....proof that this book has been read A LOT! Note: the video is the whole book so it is a little long, but it IS a good story if you'd like to hear it too :)



This next video is Reece on his first day of tackling, on his own, a book from The Boxcar Children Series. I gave him the "challenge", sort of unsure of how he would react. We all sat down together and made bookmarks and...well - he has taken a hold of it and he finished his first one this morning - 121 pages. Him and I have a milkshake date set for tomorrow to celebrate :) Here is just a short snippet of him reading....

And last we have Chase trying to sound out a few words in one of his favorite books. He is still very much into "guessing" when reading but he has come really far in sounding out words for spelling them out.



We are proud of our boys and of their love for books. Hopefully that love will grow more and more, and they will be good lifelong readers...like their Mimi :)