Reading and more

It's taken Ads a while to start reading all by himself. Atleast, I thought he would be reading a lot earlier, and somehow I had the mistaken impression that kids in India start reading by 3.5 or 4 years. Clearly that's not the case and he seems to be on the same literacy levels as most of his peers. Indeed, I'd say he is doing somewhat better than most. I give a large share of the credit to his school and class teacher, who is also his English teacher. The school in general, and she in particular lays a lot of emphasis on reading and getting the 20-odd children in the class to read aloud in public every single day has had tangible results. Over the last year, S and I haven't had the time to read to our kids as much as we would have liked. It's a fact that we don't read to Y as much as we used to read to Ads. If she does not develop a love for books and reading, I will know whom to blame :(

What really kick-started Ads' current obsession with reading (yes, YAY! Obsession it is!) is his abiding passion for big cats. More than a year ago, I had picked up some books on the big cats. A few months later, his maami bought him a lovely set of 10 books. They are called 100 facts - each book deals with one topic such as inventions, big cats, gladiators, myths and legends, mummies, sharks and so on. All of them are beautifully illustrated, printed on high-quality paper, and written very engagingly. Though Ads loves all of them, the big cats and sharks have been particular favourites.

The former has been a big reason why he started reading by himself. For more than a month now, we have rarely seen him without a book in his hand. He has even been comparing 3 different books on the big cats and finding inconsistencies between them :) The fellow is turning into a veritable encyclopedia on the cat family. Our vacation planning for the year now needs to be rapidly modified to include sightings of some big game :) I am hoping we get to do one tiger or lion park this year - I have been hearing wonderful things about Bandhavgarh and Kanha.
This mother's heart swelled with deep contentment during our break in Alwar, when we asked the kids to pose for a photograph and they did this.