Reading

Yesterday, Mr. Mister woke up from his nap and yelled, "Mommy, it's no longer dark!"

I laughed, wondering where in the world he got that from. So I went up to get him and asked him where he learned to say, "It's no longer dark." He said, "We read it in Grumpy Morning." That we did. I had forgotten, but of course, he remembered because he remembers everything.

What a picture of how much kids learn from reading, even at such a young age. It made me think of an article I read the other day in Parenting magazine called "The Early Literacy Crisis." It talked about how so many kids in America don't have enough access to books at home or enough exposure to one-on-one reading before entering kindergarten. As a result, many of these kids never catch up in regard to literacy skills. Two statistics blew me away:

• By second grade, educators can predict fairly accurately who will go onto higher education and who will not, based on literacy skills.
• Some states factor in the number of third graders who are not reading at grade level when planning future jail construction.

Isn't that sad? I know this isn't the case for every kid who enters kindergarten with low pre-literacy skills, but it obviously occurs frequently enough to contribute to these trends.

Maybe instead of implementing content standards for pre-schoolers, the government should mandate more opportunities for young children to read. Maybe then we wouldn't need so much intervention to bring kids to grade level in later years. But that's another soapbox....