Simply Reading

I was fixing lunch a minute ago (a platter of cheese ravioli in meatless spaghetti sauce---because we're French Catholic with only a drop of Irish in us from some past great-great-great grandparent and we're abstaining---St. Pat's Day or no--- because I haven't told my children differently---and a nice little salad) when I noticed something. 

All my children were reading...well, the three here at home anyway.

What's so earth shaking about this image?  Well, you see, this morning I was searching through the closets for green shirts and thinking, "We really need to start school." 

As I was putting drops of green dye in the tiolet bowls, my thought was, "We really need to start school."

While walking to retrieve the mail, "We really need to start school."

And during lunch preparations, "We really need to start school."

By this I mean we needed to get to work on all the workbook books that have accumulated on our shelves the past year.  Then I turned around and the children were all in the kitchen, at the table or close to it.   And they were reading.  No, not scholastical reading materials, not classics or novels.  But they are so engulfted in their own little projects, that the whole traditional notion of *school* plopped into a different reality.

Anyone walking into my home (which, at this point, is you the reader) would have asked, "Aren't you doing school work yet?"   Well, yes...we are:

DQ has covered the table with index cards with various drawings on them. "Look, Mom!  I'm making an art museum for Holly (her doll)."  She has finished the drawings and goes on to write invitations to her friends to please come to our house in the morning for an art exhibit surprise.  Then she pulls out my planner to find the addresses and writes them neatly on envelopes.  She pauses a moment after finding my planner to read the flyer that was stuck to it.  It's a flyer from the dance studio asking parents to help find a place for the annual recital as the Civic Center is still damaged from Hurricane Rita.   She's curious enough to read the whole flyer, think it over, and ask questions about it.  After addressing the envelopes, she proceeds to fan through my planner and read sections of it.  She gets out her own planner and begins copying notes that apply to her little world in April, such as an Easter Party, her cousin's b-day party, upcoming camping trip, and her First Communion.

Gameboy is at the table reading the newspaper and tuning me into all sport scores, events, and locations.  He sighs when I don't understand something or can't relate to what he's saying, and does his best to explain it to me.  His mind is a hive of statistics and numbers and geographical locations.  I often tell him he needs to be a newscaster.

Starr is on the computer (her normal spot during school time).  She's toying around on a site that deals with sea urchins and penguins and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!  Probably Animal Planet.    And she insists that she can read what the sea urchin is saying.  She knows it!  And she recites it.  No doubt about it.  She knows it alright.  Momma also knows that the child can't read.  She's reciting what her sister---the child who was reading at age four---has repeatedly read aloud to her.

They are absorbed in reading of their own choice.  They are fine tuning, each at their own level, their comprehension and vocabulary skills.  They are retaining information by verbally narrating the information back to me.

If I were to meet them anywhere except where I stand---by the kitchen counter---with textbooks or workbooks or my own agenda, I would be met with protest and, quite possibly, a closed mind. There would be no connection, no passion, no creativity, no purpose. 

I have often said that if we parents observe closely enough, our children are indeed reading all day long.  They read comics in the newspaper, instructions on their new Playstation games, birthday cards, joke books, Sports Illustrated, American Girl, or Highlights, sale papers, cereal boxes, quiz cards with board games, trading cards, and they read their parent's mind.   They know what they need to read in order to absorb the world around them. 

Perhaps the real problem is the fact that I'm left standing at the kitchen counter needing to feel creative, needing to partake in the feast before me, needing to join in the learning...yet feeling pretty useless.  I am a catcher of the information, a recipient of the parcels that fall from the table; but not a full participant.

So I come here to write about it.   Perhaps we'll go for another nature walk.  Perhaps Springtime does this to us.  It beckons us to get outside of ourselves and spring into life.

Comments

[Theresa]

wonderful!

[Happyheartsmom]

Who says you're not an expert writer?? Fabulous!

[Karen]

LOL... Cay, thank you for sharing this. I have been experiencing day after day of "child-led learning"... as least that's what I am calling it!

My ds sounds like your gameboy. I try to sound like I understand what he is talking about, and really I want to, but sometimes, those big words he uses... I just get lost! LOL