It must be in his genes...

In the past two weeks, Austin has had a serious breakthrough when it comes to reading on his own. In fact, it's really only been about six weeks or so that he has even been reading books at all. Granted, we have played around with BOB Books for several months, but until recently, it was always a lot of work for Austin to read even simple three letter words.

However, like I said, since Christmas, Austin has just taken flight when it comes to reading, and he actually likes it. Joseph and I are both lovers of books, so we couldn't be more proud.

To illustrate how far Austin has come, let me tell you
about his Winter Break Reading Log. The librarian at school sent home a paper encouraging the kids to keep reading over the Christmas holidays, and students who read for a certain quantity of time are eligible to attend a special party once school resumes.

In order to qualify for the party, Austin would have to read with me for a total of 150 minutes. I thought it would be a struggle to get him to read that much since he is such a new reader. However, I was wrong. Over the course of the winter break, Austin has read books to me for a total of 440 minutes. That's almost 7 1/2 hours!!! I'm so proud of him.

The librarian at our local library suggested that once I find a few books that are a good fit for Austin, I should search the catalog for other books in that series and in that reading "level." Most of the books that Austin is reading now are considered "Pre-Reading" or "Level 1" books. I've screened the books pretty carefully to make sure they aren't too difficult for him. Some Level 1 books have lots of irregular words, so I am trying to avoid those at this point. Austin has lots of sight words memorized, though, which makes reading so much easier.

My favorite series so far are called "Green Light Readers." They have very simple words and sentences, so he can pretty much read the whole book without me having to help him. Of course we like the BOB Books, too, but he is getting a little bored with those. A similar series is called, "Now I'm Reading: Clever Critters." These stories are short like BOB Books, but they are more entertaining. Austin has also read several of the Dick and Jane books, but he got bored with those pretty quickly. He really likes the Biscuit books and the Henry and Mudge books.

Austin goes back to school on Tuesday, and his teachers are going to be so proud!