A Love for Reading

I enjoy reading to the kids. I read lots of different picture books to the kids and also read a few different chapter books at a higher grade level. The purpose of that is to build listening and comprehension skills. Over the past few weeks I have read the book Nim's Island. This book is about a girl who finds herself alone on an island. After each chapter we talk about what we read and draw a picture to help us to remember what happened to the characters in our story.

A couple of weeks ago I started reading to the kids at lunch. Kids in Grades 1, 2, and 3 are also with us. I started doing this for a few reasons. We have a pretty short time to eat our lunch each day. It is plenty of time, but the kids that talk a lot may struggle finishing their food. I picked up a book and read it out loud and found that the kids started doing a better job of eating their food. The other reason is that I like the idea that I am exposing the kids to books from our library. The kids in Kindergarten might not get to check these books out yet, but they will hopefully remember some of the chapter books that I have read when they get older. I only read a couple of chapters. When I finish, I make sure that the older students know where to find the book if they are interested.