It was a conversation that I had at the beginning of the summer with another mom from my kids school.  Our youngests are in class together and our oldests are one year apart (her daughter is one year older than Noah).  We were having an honest conversation about our expectations for our kiddos and the school and results.  She has fully expected that her oldest child would be reading when she left kindergarten.  She wasn’t and she was a bit disappointed and being honest she was also a bit disappointed that she wasn’t reading before kindergarten. I said then, that I was certain Noah would be reading by the time kindergarten was over, but that I wouldn’t  be totally shocked if he wasn’t as his interest was not as high as I would like it.

I wanted to so badly for Noah to be reading before kindergarten–not in that competitive mom way, but in that “I love to read and it will crush me if my kids don’t” mom kind of way.  I was an early reader and reading is a huge part of my life.  I was a bit sad that Noah didn’t really show much interest in reading in pre-school.  Intellectually, I know that there is huge developmental span and that there was really no reason to be worried until he was getting close to the end of 1st grade to be worried about either his interest in reading and/or his emerging literacy.  But I wanted him to read.  I wanted him to unlock that world of words and stories for himself.

Well we are just starting the 3rd trimester of kindergarten and last night Noah was able to read Dr. Seuss’ Hop on Pop pretty much independently.  He needed some help sounding out some new words, but his list of sight words is growing and he was so proud of himself.

While this is just a first step–we have teacher conferences tomorrow and will get a more detailed reading assessment.  But he is progressing and with 3 months of school left–I’m pretty sure that I’ll be able to call him a reader by the time school is out.