Bedtime reading

Elf reads to the boys at bedtime, nearly every night. She reads, and reads, and reads. I usually use this time to get on the computer and blog, or fix my Supercoach football team, or work on Wikipedia stuff.

Once in a while Elf has to work or is away, and I get the reading job. Whatever she is reading to the boys nearly always turns my stomach. She has simply run out of good boys-y books to read, so at present she is reading the Anne of Green Gables series (that title was followed by Anne of Avonlea, Anne Sits On A Tuffet and Anne's Bonnet Gets Eaten By A Pony.


I decided to go for a similar historical period, but different subject matter: Basic Physics Volume 3.


Here is a typical extract from our respective books.

1. Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her. Then they walked home in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.

2. Musical notes are heard whenever a sufficiently regular and rapid succession of impulses reaches our ears. If, for example, a tapping key is operated at regular intervals, say four times per second, the noise resulting from each tap is heard as a separate sound. When, however, the rate of tapping is increased to twenty or more times per second, a continuous humming sound of definite pitch is heard and the greater the rate of tapping the higher the pitch of the hum.

The funny thing is the boys enjoy them both just as much.

Michael tells our fortunes

I came inside from mowing the lawn, and Elf said to Michael, "read that for Dad like you did for me". He led me downstairs to a junk pile he had been rooting through. He had found and read aloud unprompted a note from a fortune cookie. He read it again for me -

"You will live to a rip [ripe] age, happy in the love and ress... respect of many children. This in... insert has a pro... protec... protective coating!"

Our gobs are getting sore from repeated gobsmackings.

Marcus reads aloud

Marcus read us a little book as we drove into town yesterday. His reading is really wonderful - there are quite a few words he doesn't know, but he doesn't let it slow him down. He inflects his voice to make it interesting to listen - which must take some doing, as to do this you have to anticipate a few words ahead.

The way he handled one word I thought was fascinating. Until I read about it in a Bill Bryson book, it had never occured to me that we all (I think) pronounce "have" two ways. We "have" a cat, but we "haff" to feed it every day. Marcus was reading smoothly along a line, came to "have" and pronounced it "have", then realised the context required "haff", so went back and corrected himself.

Isn't it interesting how he has learned this little rule, or habit? I did not even know the rule/habit existed until recently, although I have been following it all my life. I have never mentioned it to Marcus. What other little obscure rules/habits are we all following, and teaching our children, unconsciously?

Star of snakes

"This is a star. It has snakes on it. The snakes eat the star." These aren't great photos, but each cluster of red and yellow and brown is a group of snakes with their tongues out, all pointing into the centre. It's a great drawing.

Marcus is the youngest in his prep class. We found out yesterday that Marcus is reading at level 5, and the rest of his prep class are mostly at level 1 or 2. I think there are about ten levels they will move through in the year.

Marcus was reading a level 5 book to me this morning, and did it very comfortably. Michael snuggled in behind us so he could read it too. Since he relies on awesome memory power rather than sounding things out, he was actually skipping ahead of Marcus and telling him what things said while Marcus was working them out.

Earlier Michael had written "apple" just for fun. He got such a good reaction to this that he sat down and covered the paper in more words. He writes in big loopy lowercase letters, but it's legible, and nearly always spelled correctly.

They are both surprising and amazing us every day.