And so it begins....

Books. Good old fashion books that you hold in your hands and turn the paper pages and hear that "skrrritch" sound as the paper gently scrapes past your sweater as you turn it - That's what I read. That is what I am used to. That is how I learned to read (okay - that over-simplified it, but for the purpose of this blog entry, lets go with that...) and for the first part of my career, that is much of how I taught.

As I just alluded to, I am a teacher, and apparently I am now teaching "21st century learners" (Are those different from kids? When I signed up for this job over 10 years ago, I thought I was teaching kids.) so I need to move forward. And so here I am "taa-daa" - blogging. If you are reading this, you are reading my first attempt at blogging. Honestly, I never even figured out how to properly sign up for a blog, comment on a blog before, but here I am - hello web 2.0!

I guess the best way for me to go about this is to blog about something I love. I love reading to and with children. I have always loved it. I loved it as a babysitter, a camp counselor, as a teacher and I especially love it as a parent.

I write this, but I do not read to my own children often enough. I will stand by my claim that we read together at least, at very minimum once a day, as a part of our bed time routine. But the teacher in me knows, while that is good, that is not enough if I could do more. There are far too many times in the day that our little guy, Buster Bear, says in his sweet voice of a two year old, "Read this to me, please Mommy?"while trailing after me with a dog-eared copy of his favourite book in hand, and I use the 4 words I have learned are often my biggest parenting cop-outs "In a minute, Sweetie."

But that minute passes by, and turns into the next, and soon he gives up on me and finds something else. And I have missed an opportunity. And much of the sad irony is that one of my main reasons for saying "In a minute, Sweetie", is that am am working on my own school work - an MEd. that focuses on literacy...early literacy.

Ugh.

So I have decided to blog on reading with our children in our busy, every day lives. How to fit it in, how sometimes it doesn't fit how we wish it would, what books are great to share, different ways to read with our children as they progress through their early reading lives - whatever comes up, I guess. I look forward to sharing this journey with anyone who is interested and will appreciate your comments and input as I blog along into the 21st century...only 10 years late!

Gotta go, my "one minute" is almost up - time to go read...
Kiki J.