Building Ourselves A Book At A Time

You can find magic wherever you look.

Sit back and relax, all you need is a book!

~ Dr. Seuss ~

Each day, in the wonderful world of kindergarten, we all stop to read books.

Now, don't get us wrong. We read books all day, whenever we want. 

But right after lunch, with content bellies and bodies, we all read.

We read with friends.

We read in groups.

We read the story of pictures and find letters whose sounds we know.

We read on laps and beside each other.

We wait with anticipation for 'our book' to be next.

We discuss and ask our capable friends questions.

We relax and excitedly share new-found knowledge. 

 

We discover that all the pictures start with the same sound.

We have conversations and make plans to follow our interests.

We help each other and learn the important skill of listening.

We reach for our favourite book, discover more, and explain.

We learn the conventions of book reading.
Left to right.
Pictures match words.
The cover gives clues.

We gain confidence and view ourselves as readers.

We point out the silliness in our story.

We point out the silliness & the sounds.

We grab both copies of our favourite and invite a friend to join us.

We form rich relationships with reading buddies (and teachers and reading).

We re-tell stories.
Another convention of book reading.

We become familiar with font and print for different purposes.
More conventions of book reading.

We let book reading carry us into revisiting our day and connecting our memories.

We reach for our favourite book and listen to our friend's discovery.

We match our book with the one we wrote to match it.

The more we connect with books, 
the more we develop a rich relationship with reading,
the more we value the joy a book spreads,
then
we become lifelong book lovers,
then 
our vocabulary grows like a pumpkin gains speed rolling down a hill,
then 
the more words we know, the more words we will know and understand,
then 
emergent literacy will have led to early literacy and lead us confidently on the path to effective literacy.

But... for now, we'll just call it our after lunch book time.