The parents at Gracepoint Riverside church are getting super skilled at capturing reading snapshots of their kiddos. Not sure if Anna wants Ian to share, or if she’s waiting for him to read aloud, but he’s really into the tactile elements of the book he’s got there!
Go ninja go! Reading is totally awesome, dude.
One concern parents have is transitioning their children to chapter books. When parents ask me when their child is ready for chapter books, I tell them, “When they’re ready for chapter books.” I know that’s not so helpful, but it’s the truth! There’s no formula, and truly, each child is different. Just as they have physical growth spurts, and this happens at different times, they also experience different cognitive growth spurts.
For example, Nikki from Gracepoint San Diego church, is only 1.5 years, but she’s a really advanced reader. She’s not only reading The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee, she’s doing it while operating a vehicle. At least she waited until she was stopped at the intersection before reading, because as we all know, multi-tasking is a myth!
“I’m only 1.5 years old, and I’m almost done with this book. What have *you* been reading?” 🙂
But Nikki isn’t the norm. Most children will naturally gravitate towards chapter books around 2nd grade, but it could be earlier or later depending. The more challenging aspect about chapter books isn’t so much the lack of pictures — in fact, many chapter books incorporate pictures — but staying with a more complex set of characters who live in a world that the author builds over time. Some will struggle more than others with this, but the important thing is to continue to foster positive associations with books, so that they are curious and drawn towards books and story in general.
Do you remember when you started reading chapter books? What were some of your favorites? Let’s take a stroll down memory lane!
Happy 2016! Oh-my-lanta, I didn’t realize it’s been almost a month since I posted last. I committed one of the biggest blogging no-no’s, so I suppose that puts me out of the running for the best church library blog award. Actually, Bibliopolis went dark off-line as well, since we ended 2015 with a certain Acts 2 virus in every college town.
But we’re back! For all the parents at Gracepoint Berkeley church, we have an updated Spring 2016 schedule for our after-school times, so please be sure to check if you haven’t already.
It was great to introduce a lot of our friends from various Gracepoint church plants to Bibliopolis at the end of the year. To make up for the dearth of cute kid posts, I give you a couple of good ones to start off 2016. 🙂
Ellie from Gracepoint Riverside church and Anna from Gracepoint San Diego church testing out the Bibliopolis rocking chair.
Ellie is adding to Gracepoint Riverside’s lead in the very unofficial “How Many Times Can We Be Featured on the Biblio-blog?” competition. And Anna’a appearance means Gracepoint San Diego is in it…to win it, perhaps? We’ll see…stay tuned.
We’ll end with the ones who came the furthest. That’s right, the stars of the Peng Family Reading video are back!
The kiddos had a blast hanging out, having Bibliopolis all to themselves for awhile. Listen to Isaac reading Uni the Unicorn by Amy Krause Rosenthal in Chinese! It looks bad that I’m scrolling through Flickr while the kiddos are reading, but I was leaving them to explore…yeah, that’s it!
Shameless call for content: If you have any photos or videos of goings on in Bibliopolis or other literacy practices during Auxano or winter break visits to Berkeley, please send them my way!
Gracepoint Church Library 