The Importance of Reading

On Wednesday I got to observe something that I had only heard about for the past year. My elder son, Bubba, was taken out of school early for a dentist appointment. When we got back to school there was a little more than thirty minutes left in the school day. After he raced down to his class room it was only about three minutes before I saw him racing back towards me. I asked what he was doing and he said, "I think my class is with the Kindergarten class." I followed him a few minutes later and I walked into the room to see about half of his fellow classmates (fourth and fifth graders) all paired up with one to two Kindergarteners each. Each of the older children was sitting, with their Kindergarteners beside them, reading them books. This was a great sight to see!

Bubba was able to do this last year as well and I have heard from him how much he has enjoyed this. His teacher last year had to tell me that even she got a kick out of his reading because Bubba would read with "character voices." This is something that I have tried to do when I read stories to my boys. I think that it makes each character a little more discernable to the boys when they talk. I never realized that they really cared whether I did it or not, I just did it because I had liked it better that way growing up. It was just great to hear that Bubba was doing the same when he read to the little kids at school.

It was also funny to hear that he specifically liked to use a British accent. I am very fond of English literature, so several movies I watch are BBC or other British made films based off some of these literary works. The boys will usually watch these with me. I can only suppose that now he will watch them now so that he can sharpen his accent skills.