Snug Slug Activities

My parents did everything they could to instill us with a love of books. Our house was full of books. Even though we got rid of nearly a third of them over the last few years there are still hundreds of books left. My mother read to us every day, and still happily reads to us sometimes even though we are nearly all adults. We went to the library every week, and spent every day in a house full of books.

We were all taught to read when we were ready and wanted to, which for me was when I was four years old, from the book “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons” by Siegfried Engelmann.

If you are looking for a starter curriculum to use, I can vouch for the efficacy of this book. Since it was, in a way, the first book I ever read, I am very fond of it myself.

We had a chart and stickers, every day after we finished our lesson we got to put a sticker on the chart. (This may have contributed to my continued love for stickers as well.)

After we finished all 100 lessons, we got to go to the bookstore and choose our very first book that would be all our own.

I chose “The Little Bear Stories” by Martin Waddell with illustrations by Barbara Firth.

I still have it now, after 24 years, and I still read it. I still remember going to the bookstore with my mother and choosing it. The bookshelves were white and there was a big glass window in the front of the store that the sun was shining through.

I also chose a new board book for my baby sister. “Bean” was well loved by a few infants and toddlers, so it has since fallen apart, but I can still recite it from memory.

After that we moved onto the Pathway Reading Primers. I don’t remember how many books were in the series, I think we had six of them? but they were fun and easy to read.

Before I even finished going through all the primers I was off. When I learned to read I felt unstoppable. I read anything and everything I could.

It feels a little bit like I am learning to read again. I never stopped loving books, but I stopped prioritizing them. I went from needing them like I need food and water, to treating them like a luxury, something that I could enjoy if I got all of my work done.

I miss reading like that, like it’s the air I breathe, blocking out the world and letting time pass by without alarms or schedules. I know I cannot live like that all the time, but I am trying to shift my time off to actually being time when I am off, not thinking about work or budgets, just being and living.