Do you remember when you fell in love with reading? I think it is easy to look back and feel like reading was always something that I loved but I can’t actually remember the process of learning to read. As a parent to two grade school aged children, we are still in the earlier years of having readers. With our first son, I remember being stressed in kindergarten with him learning how to read. It isn’t a process that comes naturally to everyone and we often worried that he would not love it because it sometimes was such a battle. He loves reading now, but that really didn’t happen until the past couple of years.
The hardest thing for me about parenting is you don’t know in the moment if what you are doing is working. You do your best, but so much of it is trial and error. Now that we have our younger son in kindergarten, we have that perspective that we didn’t have the first time. He will learn how to read, and most likely, he will love it too. We know that just by supporting what he is interested in, reading with him daily and exposing him to books is all we need to be doing right now.
I think it is easier to worry about how you are parenting your first child just because you haven’t done that parenting stage before. Our kids are definitely different in SO many ways but I love knowing that most things will work out with time. And if they don’t, there are so many resources and supports available to help in our schools and community, and we are so lucky to have that.
Our 8 year old is an early riser like me and often helps me with reading kids book on NetGalley and giving his feedback for my reviews. He recently decided it would be fun to recap his favorite books from last year. 2018 was the first year where he really wanted to read independently and he has really gotten into some book series from the town and school library. He has been keeping track of his favorites and we thought it would be fun to share on here because I know it is always helpful to have some recommendations for different ages and stages of reading.
Dog Man by Dave Pilkey
The Flying Beaver Brothers by Maxwell Eaton III
The 39 Clues by Rich Riordan
The Terrible Two by Mac Barnett and Jory John
The Fire Within by Chris D’Lacey
The 13-Story Treehouse by Andy Griffiths
Winning Season (The Roar of the Crowd) by Rich Wallace
The Contract by Derek Jeter
