In the interests of research, can I be really nosy

[saadia]

and ask what age reading clicked with your dss and/or dds?

Ds is in Reception and will be five in two months and he is struggling with blending letters even though he knows all the letter sounds. He has a good memory and knows several words by sight, but is not yet able to read new words just by sounding out.

Agree Cat64. Reading to my dds (I still do, but not as regularly with the elder two) is one of my great pleasures as a parent. Its real bonding time, a shared experience.

Through reading to them I've encountered great books that I otherwise would never have read and I've also shared the books that I enjoyed as a achild and have had the pleasure of seeing them enjoy too.

cat64 -- that is nice to know. DS is much less interested in colouring & "writing" than DD was. But am trying to encourage him to do some, as I understand boys are as good with fine motor as girls to generalise.

But goodness me does he love being read to. I think between 1 & 2 we did nothing but read -- as that is what he wanted. But we are a big family of readers (grandparents, aunts, uncles included), as I am always reading something (mags, newspapers, books), so don't worry too much.

DD1 was in nursery (just 4?) when she became fluent.
Dd2-5.3 now at not that interested, doesn't help that she can remember things so easily that whole books are memorised after one read through so I don't know what she is reading. [rolls eyes]

dottylou I know what you mean. Sometimes I buy childrens' books because I love the illustrations or because of their poetic qualities. Ds1 has memorised most of his early ORT books so I'm not sure if there's much point in "reading" them anyore. Ds2 (2.5) sits with us whle we read and he is also memorising them now.

DS has been reading short words for about 4 months now and is just beginning to read 2-3 words at a go, and he's 3. He LOVES his books, we have loads and he'll sit looking at a book on his own for ages. He's pretty much followed my example on this even to his first read word - CAT on a bag of cat litter - as I was reading young too. The bad news is that this probably means our spend on books is going to reach national debt levels.

Can I second (third?) the comment about reading to your children. It's a really important part of the day for us - takes hours now though that they all how different stories!. With my DS#1 there was a long time when, if I hadn't read to him, he'd never have seen the inside of a book outside of lessons, and I don't think that's an ideal situation to instill a love of words, books, stories etc. I personally think that a life without those things would be very dull indeed.

Yes, I often ditch the school reading if I or they can't be bothered (bad mother on last few children after 22 years...) and read to them instead. Mustn't miss the reading to them in bed. Although I think last year subjecting boys to the whole little house on the prairie series might have not been such a good idea. I enjoyed it.

Boys need LH on the Prairie too - how else will they know how to butcher a pig and eat the tail?