At what age did your child start reading for pleasure?

[Fuzzymum1]

I know it varies hugely and there isn't really a 'normal' here but I can't remember when my older boys started curling up with a book by choice.

All of my boys have learned to read quite easily and I remember there were times when both DS1 and DS2 were getting through books quicker than I could keep up with visiting the library! As a family we all love to read.

DS3 has just turned 6 and has been reading lime at school for a while and needs very little help with them, his teacher says his comprehension is good too - working at around 2A I think. He has lots of books with a variety of themes and styles but he's yet to make that move to wanting to read for pleasure. I'm not worried about him, he loves to be read to and loves audio books - he's having a chapter a night of harry potter at the moment and really enjoying it, but I am looking forward to the day he wants to curl up and read on a rainy day. instead of insisting we all play school assembly and sing

Do you mean looking words up in a dictionary or looking up what words mean in the glossary (non fiction)?

DS was taught about the glossary, index, contents pages etc at the end of reception/early year 1.

As the books get longer the glossary will start to be used for reference. At the moment we're reading the whole thing as part of the school book. (But the books and the glossaries are pretty short.) But in general it will be a dictionary that unfamiliar words are being looked up in. At the moment I'm letting my daughter help me look words up in my Odhams 1932 dictionary. But it's very old and musty and she objects to its smell. I can't live without it but I'm going to have to buy a new one at some point.

i was that child Haberdashery.I used to understand a words meaning largely from context.The pronunciation wasn't always right but i always got the gyst of it.My biggest worry is that my 4 dc's won't.With this emphasis on understanding text taking all the enjoyment out of reading and the modern competitors of nintendos,wiis and computer games what hope do we have?

In terms of choosing and reading books on their own, my DCs both reached that stage at 7.

DS always read but it was almost always non-fiction until the age of about nine. He enjoyed Roald Dahl and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (but only that one -- he wasn't interested in even trying the other books), but mostly read books about volcanoes and other natural disasters.

Then I read aloud the first chapter of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief ... and he was off! Since then he's read, and re-read at the rate of a book a night.

DD was 7.

DS is 3.8 and he is "reading" his books for pleasure, sitting with them by himself, turning the pages and saying out loud the parts he remembers on each page.

I would love to know how representative the responses on threads like this are. Reading all 7 of the Narnia Chronicles by 5 and a half!? It is so unlike my experience!
By the way, has anyone looked at the lexile measure website? It is quite interesting - as it tries to asses the complexity and vocabulary etc or different books, across a range of 10 to 1700 - in order to let you match them to children's abilities. On this, Chronicles of Narnia has a score of around 800-950 (as do the Harry Potters) - while Rainbow Fairies is 540, as are roughly the Horrid Henry books. Black Beauty beats them all at 1010.
www.lexile.com/about-lexile/lexile-overview/

something to obsess over!

As I said, tesla- there's reading and reading if you see what I mean!

And you notice it's always a very narrow range of books these talented 5/6 year olds read. Narnia, Alice, Black Beauty and Harry Potter are the main ones !

It does seem to vary according to which edition of the book the children are reading.

DS has always loved reading, from the age he could hold a book in his hands.

I was just an early and competent reader, telsa (I'm the one who'd read all the Narnia books at five and a half). As we so often hear on these threads, it sadly did not translate into any form of genius in later life ! Although I'm still a very fast reader, which was handy at university when I had to read quite a lot of books every week.

I suspect people talking about readers who are reading at higher levels than would be usual for someone of that age tend to give obvious things like Narnia as examples because we all know everyone else has at least heard of them and has probably read them so it's a common reference point in terms of what kind of reading material people are talking about. There's very little point in using an obscure book nobody's ever heard of as an example!

"It does seem to vary according to which edition of the book the children are reading."

Yep, the LadyBird Classic Black Beauty would be a bit different to the original.......

Also you can't go far wrong with classic children's books.

Yes you can. Many of them are long, boring and incomprehensible.

That's a very interesting site, telsa. I'm looking up some of the books that DD has read recently and they seem to vary massively in complexity.

That's a good thing though, haberd, surely.

Well, it's neither good nor bad really, just interesting. They vary from about 600 to 1100. Some of the more complex ones aren't the ones I'd have expected, either. And it's interesting that eg Black Beauty comes in at 1010 and shows clearly that reading difficulty isn't all you need to take into account because I suspect that DD would be massively upset by it at 6. Also, I haven't read Black Beauty for many years but I would have assumed that it would be too hard for her.

Oooo! I remember DS was lazy with reading independently even though he knew how to read at an early age(4-5) I got fed up of reading to him because I knew he could do it by himself. So one day I read upto a really exciting bit in the book and just left it there and made excuses not to carry on- too busy, will read tomorrow etc and voila! He read the rest himself, and hasn't stopped since. I think he has the last laugh though since I can't keep up with providing him with enough books, it is exhausting (think 20 plus books in a month, all books above his age) maybe I should just get him a kindle and be done with it.
DD on the other hand was a late developer, she'd rather do arts and craft at bedtime, even though she could read around 7-8 too. She is reading for pleasure only now at 9-10, and is beginning to whine about more books (average is probably about 12 a month) and prefers to write her own stories now.

I agree with seeker lots of young children dislike the children's classics like Black Beauty and Pippi Longstocking intensely. My daughter hated Beatrix Potter and Enid Blyton much to her granny's dismay

Interesting. What did she like instead?

The Owl who was afraid of the Dark
The worst witch
Jeremiah in the dark wood
Woof!
The Hodgeheg
Diary of a killer cat
there's a boy in the girls bathroom
etc etc etc

My 8 year olds favourite book of all time is the enchanted tree series by Enid blyton.She is currently reading the Wishing Chair series .My dc's when they were tiny used to love me reading Beatrix Potter to them[and the mr men series for some reason].I think maybe because these books were little [and so were they].

My mum bought the complete Beatrix Potter and Jane Hissey collections when my daughter was born and she would say "please not those mummy"

Mine love Mr Men and John Burningham. My older one loves Beatrix Potter read to and to read, and she's reading Christian Anderson to me. She loves to listen to Alice in Wonderland and Wind in the Willows, (nearly all) stuff I had as a child.