Me Me Me!

My amazing daughter

She reads! so much, all the time, I think she's amazing anyway, she has passed all the reading stages for her class, year four and three mixed, they go up to stage fourteen I think. At school she is allowed to pick any book she wants. At home she reads all the time, she loves Asterix and all the Roald Dahl books... she just reads all the time, I'm so made up! first thing she does in the morning is read a book, when she goes to bed she hides under the quilt with a little tourch and reads a book. There are books scattered around the house with little corners bent over, she's just become book mad since starting year three.

Quite amazing I think.

In fact I can't express how happy I am that she has got the reading bug, she can read anything, sometimes I get her to read a paragraph from what ever I'm reading and she seems to have got the 'code' to decipher words, even words she doesn't know... she said to me the other day, when she writes things she can see when the word doesn't look right... and I told her it's probably because you read so much and all those words go into your head and they are there wating to be remembered, all their structures and how they work.

Sorry to go on but I'm just so proud, she's seven and she can read grown up books without problem : )

She has though cottoned on to the fact that if she asks for a book in the charity shop I will always say yes, where as if she asks for a toy I generaly say no. But I don't mind as it's a good thing to encourage I think... reading!

: )

My sons not into reading either Louise, he just reads what he has to, other than that he plays computer games... all the time. I make myself feel better by telling myself that... well at least he has to read a bit in his games : )

I'm doing a TA course and apparntly they are again focsing on times tables in schools, my kids are learning them at school, and in one of the schools I work at the teacher puts on videos of songs of times tables that the kids sing along to while munching their fruit and drinking heir milk.

On my TA course I was suprised at the level of maths of the other students, mostly younger than me, I had to recite the tables when I was in school and so I know them, if you ask me 7x8 I can tell you, it was only me and another woman a bit older than me that knew them.

Also simple things like multiplying and deviding by 10, 100, 1000 etc where you basicaly just move the decimal point, I was supprised that people didn't know this.

From what my lecturer tells me they are again concentrating on these basic maths skills in schools : )

When I was in school learning my times tables the teacher used to walk around the class with a meter ruler and hit you with it if you got them wrong, you can't do that anymore.