Second Grader

It is most certainly true that this child does not enjoy studying for his spelling test each week, but I’d like to take a moment to mention that his transition into second grade, something that caused him anxiety weeks before school began, has gone exceptionally smoothly.  He’s been relaxed about going to school every day.  He has even been getting out of bed on time most days and hasn’t been scrambling to get to the bus stop on time.  His behavior at school has been excellent, and he’s getting along with people!  All of this makes my heart smile.  This week I had the greatest conference with his teacher, who I think has just been the perfect person for him this year.  The conference was so great I wanted to burst into tears, actually.  This kidlet has made SO much progress in so many ways, not to mention that he has some reading skills that will knock your socks off.

Posted outside his second grade classroom were some excellent pieces of writing that his class had done.  Sometimes I feel like writing gets lost in the shuffle in our school district because a big emphasis is placed on standardized testing, so I was really excited to read all the writing in the hallway while I was waiting for his conference.  Writing is no Mr. SP’s choice activity.  He loves to read, and he has so many great fantastical ideas in his head, but he is extremely fearful of putting them down on paper.  Mr. SP’s writing was much shorter than his classmates.  All of them were writing about their mothers.  It’s always interesting to see what your children might write about you, I believe.  Mr. Sneaky Pants wrote that I liked to cook cookies and take him to fun places.  He wrote that I spent a lot of time reading to him and that I liked cleaning.  Like cleaning?  It might be true that he does see me picking up everyone’s mess in the evening every day, but I don’t actually enjoy it!  His misconception made me smile, especially because our house is far, far from ever being even remotely clean.  In fact, I live in one of the messiest houses of anyone that I know personally.

These days Mr. SP spends large swaths of time with his nose in a book.  It is amazing how many books he reads.  When he discovers a series of books he likes he reads every. single. one.  He’s happiest when people just forget about him and let him read in his room.  I suspected all along that as soon has he became a proficient silent reader he would be hooked, because he’s always really loved stories and  like me he can’t ever leave a book unread in the middle of the story.  He caught that bug from not only me but his father, who is the same way.  Once a book is started, none of us can do anything else at all until it’s finished.  One night this last summer ALL THREE of us stayed up until 2:00 a.m. or later finishing books, and we had a pretty good laugh when we realized that each of us was frantically reading away all night long (I finished at 4:00 a.m.) in different rooms of the house.   Of course we can’t do that during the school week because we all have to get up early, but that is what our hearts desire.

Mr. SP has been wanting to read Harry Potter for months, and we tried to stave him off, especially since he’s not probably emotionally ready for the last books in the series and we know that he’ll want to read all the books right away.  YaYa is really good about waiting to read things that might be a little mature, but Mr. SP was just dying to read Harry Potter and find out about everything other people are always referencing.  After finding him sneaking the first book off the shelf we sat him down and had a talk about Harry Potter and why we weren’t so sure he was quite old enough to read them yet.  Dr. Peds explained that some families aren’t comfortable with kids reading Harry Potter because the story is very fantastical and not realistic.  Mr. SP looked at him, jaws dropped open, aghast.  “You mean they only let their kids read nonfiction?  They don’t like fiction at all?”  Mr. SP actually gave some compelling reasons why he was ready for Harry Potter, and so finally we just gave in and let him read the first one.

Upon finishing it he immediately wanted to read the second one, of course.  Dr. Peds was away, and I told him that he needed to wait and talk to us both before he started reading the second book.  I should have known better!  Of course if you tell a kid not to read something, he’ll go to great lengths to read it, and in this case, since I had hidden our family copy of book 2, Mr. SP made a special trip to the school library to check out book 2!  Since he recounted in astonishing detail everything that happened in book 1, we gave in to letting him read book 2.  And then, of course he wanted to read book 3.  And once again, Dr. Peds was away, so while he had him on the telephone, Mr. SP thought that would be a good time to discuss book 2 so that he could start book 3.  Let me tell you, it was a LONG conversation, and in fact, Mr. SP had already secretly started book 3, so we just gave in and let him read that one too.  (Yeah, we’re just not tow-the -line parents when it comes to censorship, I guess.  We just don’t have it in us.).

I’m really telling you all this so that I can tell you that while Mr. SP understands everything in the Harry Potter books and loves them, he’s also a true emerging silent reader, one who sees a word and mispronounces it inside his head and keeps reading because it makes enough sense and he wants to find out the next thing that happens.  I couldn’t help but giggle in the next room while Mr. SP was talking about Book 2 with Dr. Peds and discussing the “dominators” (dementers) and how someone nearly got “expealed” (expelled).  Best of all he refers to Hermione as “Hermantown” or “that Hermantown girl.”  Hermantown is actually a small “suburb” of Duluth.