The Week #278

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  • 📚 We made a visit to our local Yokohama city library and I think I want to make it part of our weekly routine. There is a English books corner in the kids section which is nice (though I think we'll read them it in no time). It's amazing the transformation of people by place, incuding boyo. While he didn't suddenly sit down and start reading heaps of books, his mind seemed to open up towards reading. In some ways, we're clones of each other, me and Leo. In others he's entirely different.  I was always stuck in books, organized a library in my room, and read the most number of books in my class at his age.
  • 🐉 One of the reasons why this could be is the format of a physical book. When you're struggling reading a book it can be quite discouraging. Turning each page you see how little progress you're making. Realizing this I experimented by putting the Kindle app (where we had a Dragon Ball manga sample) on his iPad and Leo sat down and read the entire 33 pages. Success!

    Building on this, I've taken an ancient iPad Mini that's been sitting around discharged and loaded some manga into the Books app. This will become Leo's e-reader for now and I hope it will enable him to enjoy reading more. I also started loading kids books on to my Kindle so we can read them at night before bed. Surprisingly, it's the first time he's actually listened to chapter books in English when I've tried to read them. I think it's the format. We shall see if a new routine and an easier way to read without the discouraging affordances get him over the reader hump.
    Captain Underpants