What a weekend

So the weekend comes to a close and how often do we look back and think of the chances that we gave our children to learn and explore.  For myself this is the one I try to make my goal to be better at, this weekend we were able to take the kids to the Drive-in to see Kung Fu Panda 2, this was a great time for the kids to really have a blast and stay up late. For the parents it was a great time that turned out better then one might dream of.  Our kids loved the movie and watched it with excitement not only for the movie but the chance to eat junk food and run and jump around the back of the van.  Great time.
To the Sunday night book reading, this was very fun as my oldest brought me our small book collection of Richard Scarry books, they are a set of 8 board construction books about 8 pages long and full of colorful pictures and lots of busy and fun scenes that our oldest seems to just love.  They have opened up his ability to look at the picture and tell his own story from what he sees and his younger brother will tell a crazy story of how he has seen a watermelon car out side or that he saw a worm with a tennis shoe outside in the garden.  The books range in title from Things That Go!, Huckle's Opposites which is a great book to do a Q&A with young children the words are simple and short, great for the young reader developing his ability to recognize words.  We have All About Us, Get Up and Go!, Huckle's Good Manners, and others which can be found at www.fivemile.com/au or http://www.amazon.com/ My littlest boy came to me with   He is really into pointing and asking "whats this" and wanting to hear the story of what he points to and this book like all Disney books is great for him, with dogs and cats, and even a horse I can give him a good story in a few short minutes and he is interested and turning the pages ready with a point and answer. 
My three year old is into the Batman supper hero thing and I got these books from work and for him it is that feeling of beating the bad guy and the fighting and being strong that really gets him into the book and wanting to read.  That is okay because it helps us talk about what it takes to be supper and that bad guys are out there but if you take care of yourself you can take on those bad guys and be like Batman, and he loves knowing that he can get bigger and stronger and that gives me a smile and know that this is part of who he is right now.
So as you can see the age might not actually say anything about the books they want to read, but you just go with it with no questions just an open mend and make it into something that lets them learn and grow in their search for language and knowledge of their world.  Reading is the one thing that a father can build in the child and it takes only a small amount of time for it to build into a world of difference.
Until tomorrow read a comic to your kids