BayDad

Last weekend we went to Story Time at the Mountain View library for the first time.

Every Saturday at 10:15am, a volunteer librarian comes in and reads stories and sings songs with the children (ages 3-6 “by the book” and Mr. Busy was one of the younger folks there at 18 months.)  I went there with my wife, and we had a pretty nice time.  The librarian read 2 Christmas stories, sung 2 songs, and then Santa arrived with his helper Elf.  They handed out musical instruments, and everyone sang Jingle Bells together before Santa left.

When all that was done, all the kids went out into the library area where they had coloring supplies ready.  Mr. Busy is still a bit young for coloring (with any attention span) so we just headed off.

We arrived at 10am, just as the library was opening, and were done by 10:45, so it’s a pretty quick event.  That said, I thought it was pretty fun, and I would really like Mr. Busy to get more social storytime and singing, so I think we’ll try to go back there on a more regular basis.

(Amazingly, this info is hard to find on the web.  You can see a printable flyer here)

Hope to see you there!

So, this was going to be a “help!” post, but that’s because I titled it about 3 months ago.   So, I’m going to turn it into a story…

About 3 months ago, Mr. Busy was 15 months old, and we were really trying hard to get him to enjoy books & reading.  It was sort of a struggle, where we would straddle that fine line between forcing him to sit in our laps and listen, and tricking him into sitting still for a few minutes to listen…

It was a real dilemma — were we going to have the boy who wouldn’t read?  Were were going to go straight to TV?

Well, I’ll say that the answer is ‘no’ and it’s all thanks to Thomas The Tank Engine.  Yes, those silly words, and those silly characters.  At that age, Mr. Busy had already begun his fascination with all things transportation, and the only thing left to close the gap in his reading was for him to find a TTTE book on the shelf.

Overnight, he went from “I don’t want to have anything to do with your silly books” to “Please! Train! Up! Up! Train! Woo Hoo!”  which is his way of saying “Dearest Father, Would you mind lifting me into your lap, opening this book, and reading to me?”

Its great.  Now he loves books of most kinds.  We have a great large format word book with pictures of all kinds of stuff.  He loves sitting there identifying things, and having me point at things and name them.  His favorites?  Orange. Horsey. Banana. Truck! Train! Copter! Airplane! (Fire) Engine!