Monday, September 13, 2010

"I wish I were Harry Potter..."

So, my kids have discovered Harry Potter.

During our recent visit to Minnesota, Nico heard part of an audio-book his cousin was listening to, and away he went! Fortunately, we happened to have all of the Harry Potter books and a few of the movies already (since my husband and I had read them ourselves).

Now my two little boys are going around drawing red-marker lightning-bolts on their heads and waving magical chopsticks at each other.

Personally, I'm glad to see my kids getting excited about a story in a book. They've learned an amazing amount of science from videos on YouTube (I should post some of Nico's drawings of whale evolution), but I'd like to see them want to read for pleasure. So far it's just been me reading to them a chapter at a time (plus my Mom read to them during our visit), but Nico has picked up the book and read bits of it.

For the moment, I don't mind just reading to them myself because I'd like to start by building up the idea that a story read from a book is fun and exciting. These are the sorts of crazy new challenges modern parents have to navigate! Plus, it's fun to spend the time reading with them. I hope eventually, though, they'll get the idea that they don't need mom's help, just as they finally learned to swing by themselves (and stopped asking me to push them).

4 comments:

Carla Schmidt Holloway said...

Sounds like a lot of fun! It's frightening to think I started reading Harry Potter about 10 years ago, when I was in 6th grade. And now I'm old enough to be married and think about reading HP to my kids someday. That's intense.

C. L. Hanson said...

Hey Reader!!!

I've had fun showing my kids stuff that I loved as a kid (like Schoolhouse Rock). But for Harry Potter I never had to make that transition. I learned about the books as an adult, when my husband showed them to me. (I think that at least two of the books had already come out when I started reading them.)

Donna Banta said...

Red-marker lightening bolts? Too funny. My daughter and I went to one of those midnight releases when the final book came out. The bookstore was divided into two camps, one side cheering, "Snape is good!" the other, "Snape is bad!"

C. L. Hanson said...

Hey Donna!!!

What fun! Too bad my kids were too young to be interested in Harry Potter then.