Thanksgiving Conversations

Location: Applebees, Minneapolis, MN
Reason: Dinner before going to see the Broadway musical: "Wicked"

My family is known to have some pretty awesome conversations at the dinner table, for example:
-What does your belly button look like?
-How do we whistle the right pitch?
and so on...

Tonight, we got on to the topic of literacy in elementary schools. My oldest sister Angel, is a first grade teacher in Prior Lake, MN. She talked about how often parents mistake her suggested nightly reading. Many parents think they are supposed to be simply letting their kids read to them (so they will learn), and this can be quite the task for the kid and the parent. Parents are struggling to find appropriate age levels of books, and it has become a hassle.

We then realized what the key to literacy is. Read to your children! And they don't have to be little kid books either! We can read books that are beyond their reading level, but maybe not their comprehension level.

All four of my siblings started reading at a young age, and have all fallen in love with books, as adults. We owe it all to our father. He read chapter books to us. One chapter, every night, for years. He would even let us sit behind him so we could read along, and sometimes we even got assigned a character to read, whenever they had quotations. I know I am a better reader because of this experience. And I believe every child should have that opportunity.