Reading club

Andy is in reading club at the request of his teacher. Apparently there are two kinds of reading club here. One is an enrichment, "You're doing great, let's do more reading! Crime and Punishment anyone?" kind of club. The second is more, "Your reading could be better. Let's meet after school once a week."

I was surprised to get the call from his teacher as I didn't realize it was a problem -- it's not like there are grades that matter in first grade per se. But after talking with her, she explained that he just didn't really like reading so he wasn't progressing so she wanted to get him over the hump, so to speak. And it's true, he just didn't like to read so it was always pulling teeth to get him engaged.

After talking to lots of other parents with his age, I realized that it's a really common thing and that there seem to be kids on all levels of the spectrum. I also realized that him and me fighting over getting him to read wasn't great so I hired a tutor to work with him once a week.

I must say, that's been the biggest difference. Reading club has been off and off due to the health of his teacher, but meeting with the tutor, he's managed to go from hating to read to wanting to read quietly in his room at night. It's been the most amazing shift to go from hating it to loving it. It also helps that we found some books he likes. Someone recommended The Spiderwick Chronicles which are great. We've also been reading some of the Magic Tree House series (there are only about 163 of those so we've got a lot to read). It has just been totally cool to see the transformation from non-reader to loving to read.

Here are a couple of the Egan family holiday pictures. I thought I was getting the whole CD from mom, but I managed to only get two pictures. At least they're good ones.