On Reading

I love to read. And I am not talking about reading but reading aloud. Giving importance to each word, punctuation, pause and the tone of the voice. I could recite poems and Julius Caesar for hours and not surprisingly, studying English or Hindi was my favourite activity, because it gave me a chance to read aloud to myself.
Moving on, I love reading to my kids and hate it when they interupt me with question. When I was in the right mood I would pause at sight words and Tejas would supply them as we read the story, much to Ojas' annoyance as he likes the story to move uninterupted.

A typical reading session would be peppered with-
Tejas- show me, show me the word, where is it written
Ojas- show me , show me where is the cat (or apple or whatever).
Little did I realize that this was their way of reading the book until I noticed that Tejas can read an entire page as I point at the words and Ojas can tell some excerpts of the story out of memory and the rest through the pictures much to my delight and concern that Ojas is not reading as much as he is memorising. He matches word patterns and reads rather than reading the word.

So the update is that to boost the reading skills and sight word recognition I have made a whole host of Dolch sight words on flash cards and we do the word exercise everyday. We are seeing progress and the challenge is to prevent Ojas from memorizing and answering instead of actually reading the words out.

On a different note, I saw this nice post at Narad Tales and would love to do it- a nice positive approach to day to day life- will do it once I am back next week- yes- I am off to a short holiday coupled with work- alone- sans kids. It pains me greatly to go without them as they were enthusiastically packing their crayons and laptop - patna mein hum kya karenge, isiliye crayon and laptop le kar chalte hain.