It seems like it happened overnight. We woke up one morning last week and we suddenly had an insatiable chapter book reader on our hands. Our family has been familiar with Mary Pope Osborne's Magic Tree House series for a few years now. In audiobook format Ms. Osborne has saved our lives on a number of occasions: there was that 9-hour Moroccan bus ride last spring, that incredibly long wait in the aptly named waiting room of that tardy doctor, oh, and that time the grown ups wanted to watch the Oscars live, semi-uninterrupted. OK, that last one wasn't life saving necessarily but you've heard the adage "happy parents = happy kids"? It also hasn't hurt that our son tends to blurt out interesting facts during grandparent visits, like "you know it was a long time ago when the Titanic sank. It was 1912. On April 15th." This effectively makes him look like a genius, which in turn makes us look pretty good too. So we've sent mental thank yous to Ms. Mary on several occasions.
But now audiobooks are taking a back seat to the hand held variety and we are almost getting "Norm" status at the library as we cycle through the series. And it's great! It buys us more guilt-free time for meal preparation (should I mention my hair has been looking better lately too since I can have more quality time with it?). So what was it that took our son from being a casual part-time player to that of a real-deal reader? Yup. Mary Pope Osborne. Well, more specifically her online people. The people who developed her Passport to Adventure.
If you sign up to Magic Tree House online you can collect a stamp for each one of the books in the series and glue them into your printable passport. The trick? You have to answer 3 trivia questions about the book to see if you read it before you can collect the stamp. Now our boy is on a serious mission to fill his little passport pages with stamp after stamp. Whatever it takes, I say.
So there is nothing ground breaking in our story really. It's yet another example of the right thing happening at the right time. What about you? We would love to hear about your experiences with raising readers. What resources got your little ones going, online or otherwise? Any surprises?
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My daughter got hooked on reading from Magic Tree House books. She is about to go into the third grade and she can tear through two in one day. After she read the titanic book she found a documentary online and wikipedia'ed it to learn more. She has read almost all of the books and it has really helped her reading skills to move on to books that are very much above her reading level. She has completed about 8 full length chapter books along with several Magic Tree House Books.
My son on the other hand was not a fast reader in Kindergarten. We found that he didnt want to read unless it was really interesting to him. My husband found that a "simple" card (Magic the Gathering" came really honed in on our sons math and reading skills. The cards have a lot of text on them with complex words and there is a lot of fast math, all of which he has picked on on rather quickly usually beats my husbands friends at the game that they have been playing for years. Now the only things besides the cards that he will really likes to read are comics and Goosebumps Books. Which, as a second grader, I dont feel the need to push other books onto him until his proficiency has increased.
It goes so fast!!!
My daughter has been whipping through the Magic Tree House books at school, all sorts ofEnid Blytons at home, and as of last week, has become obsessed with Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I didn't think she was old enough for them, but we were hiking in the Alps and her 8 year old friend had it, and so while he was out on an 8 hour hike, she went on a 3 hour hike, and spent the rest of the time reading his book since she didn't have one of her own. She's only 7!
we loved the little package that she got in the mail with her passport a few years ago when she was into the MTH series. a little sad that they don't send out the "real" thing anymore, but glad to see that they are keeping it alive. :)