Thank you.
One hundred times, thank you.
For those who haven’t seen it yet, Super Why! on PBSkids is “geared towards children on the cusp of reading.” That means preschoolers. That means, my kids.
We’ve tried flash cards. Different kinds of books. All gently, all without really making him squirm. But I’ve been worried he would never pick up a love of reading, a want of words and sentences and paragraphs that make your mind wander.
Count Waffles will be 5 in March and while he can invent an entire city with semi-working plumbing in my front room, reading about one just doesn’t interest him. When I told him he could learn how to build it bigger, better, stronger from a book-he rolled his eyes, looked at me with that “don’t make me I get so frustrated” shrug and I let it go.
Then came WordGirl who peaked his interest slightly. WordGirl accidentally led us to Super Why!
And today…today my son spelled RED in my front room while asking me where he could find “that one car, you know mom, the red one –r-e-d, red.”
Holy crap. Did he just spell red? Wait. Does he even know what that looks like on paper? Can he…I mean could he…might he actually be able to READ the word?
I showed him a red crayon. I asked him to read the label. First he looked at me like I was insane. He looked at the crayon. He looked at me. I showed him the r. I showed him the e. I showed him the d. His eyes lit up.
Red, mom. That says RED.
I cried. He again looked at me like I was insane, but in that…Mom stop GUSHING way insane. He was damn proud of himself too.
Then he asked to watch Super Why! (horray Tivo) and asked to play the Super Why! games on the office computer. Could he get a computer like Whyatt? Could he get books like the Super Readers have? Isn’t his cape cool? I wish I could spin like that and make my clothes change. Did you know Mom you can have an adventure by reading? And on. And on. And on. And on.
It’s my understanding the creators of Super Why! are the brains behind Blues Clues. I just want to say publicly-
Angela C. Santomero and Samantha Freeman Alpert– this Mom thanks you.
Sincerely, (and I mean it)
Queen of Spain
p.s. not to be outdone, the 2.5 year old spelled SMART and pretended to read 3 books today. Show off. I have no idea where she gets it from.
Recent Comments