Instilling the love of reading.

So this morning I decided that it was time to start reading big chapter books to Noah, hoping that eventually he will want to read them for himself. I chose one that would be exciting and draw him in.




So, this morning Noah gets out of bed and we eat breakfast together. It was a calm and quiet morning. There was still a good hour before Dani was going to get up and so I asked Noah if he wanted me to read him a story. His answer was without hesitation. "YES!"

I took him upstairs and we snuggled into my nice warm bed and he snuggled right up ready for a story. When I pulled out Narnia, he got very excited because he liked the cover and then he told me "Mommy, I have seen those movies!" I told him that indeed we had.

As I opened the book he asked me why there were not an pictures and so I explained that he needed to imagine the story in his head. "In my BRAIN???" he asked. He was right. So I started to read him the first chapter of the first book "The Magician's Nephew". As I got through every page or so he would stop me and ask questions. I expected this and encouraged this as he was trying to create his mental picture. He mainly wanted to know what the little boy looked like, and as the book does not have a description, I invented on for him, inadvertently making the little boy look like my son. The more I read the more excited he got, the more excited he got the more excited I got.

When we got to the end of the first chapter I asked him to tell me all about it and he told me almost every detail and asked a lot of questions. Then he asked me to read another chapter. We repeated the process again with chapter two. When it was time for chapter three, I knew that Dani should be getting up anytime now and tried to explain that to Noah. But he was begging me to read more to him. So I told him "Only one more chapter" (they are pretty short) and the read him chapter three.

I knew that he would want more after chapter three but I had to put my foot down. Dani had awaken while I was reading and was yelling "MAMA!!!" at the top of her lungs by the time I was done.

I know that I have created a monster now, and that every morning he is going to want to spend the time between breakfast and when Dani gets up reading. I love this. I am glad to be bring the love and joy of books to my son, and hope that he grows into a person that loves reading just about anything that I can put in front of him. I love that while reading he can tell me what some words are and he tries to sound out ones that he does not know yet.

Right now, I am just a proud and happy mommy!