Day 271: Three Fish, Four Fingers

Not quite. Henry knows how to say the numbers and he even knows how to associate the correct number with the words, but he hasn't quite mastered the coordination required to express the numbers with his fingers.

Tonight we were reading a bunch of books before bed, a few of them were books that count from 1 to 10. While we were reading these counting books Henry was trying to copy me counting the numbers on my fingers, for Henry it was a two hand process that wasn't quite right all the time but entertaining all the same. It was very cute watching his mind battle with his body so I decided to take a photo of it and use it for today's post.

Day 74: Speed Reading

Henry kept himself very well entertained by sitting up on the couch like a big kid and working his way through a selection of his books, he did this for the whole time it took me to cook the pasta and reheat the bolognese for his dinner tonight.

He very methodical when it comes to reading his books, there's a real process with steps that have to be taken along the way.

It starts with a pile of books to his left, he takes the one on top and flips through the pages points to the pictures he knows and yells out what it is, sometimes he just yells out random noises but I'm sure it means something to him. When he gets to the last page he waves to it yelling out 'Bye!' before he closes the book and moves it to his right.

This process is repeated with each of the books until they've all been moved from his left to his right, then he starts again working his way from right to left. Tonight this process took about 15 minutes, he was really motoring his way through them.

It's great to see his interest in books continue to grow, it's also great when he occupies himself while you're getting his dinner organised instead of getting under foot in the kitchen.

Day 31: A Little Light Reading

Henry has become very fond of his collection of books. It used to be that reading to him while he had his pre-bed milk was a fight to keep the book open; the novelty of closing the book mid sentence took a while to wear off.

Now one book before bed just isn't enough and he selects the evenings reading material one at a time. He toddles over to his pile of books and picks one, toddles back to the couch and hands the book over then raises his arms to be lifted onto my lap for his story. After the story is read and Henry has finished pointing at the animals in the book and saying "Baa Baa" at the sheep or "Moo Moo" at the cows, he climbs off my lap to choose his next story. This process was repeated 7 times tonight.

After the 4th time, I thought I'd try to bribe some kisses out of Henry so when he brought the 5th book over I asked for a kiss before I'd pick him up to read the next book. He shook his head and said "No". This process was repeated 3 times with the same result.

He loves his books so much now that he even ropes Jenna into reading him stories. Last weekend he presented her with 12 books, one at a time, for her to read to him. As much as I love my turn reading to Henry before bed, I also think it's very special that Henry will ask his big sister to share time reading with him and that Jenna will so happily spend the time with her little brother. I couldn't be more proud of my children.