Raising confident daughters with Children's books for girls: A Girl Named Pants
I was an October baby, so when I began school, I was one of the youngest in my class. To make matters worse, I was the smallest. For this reason, and probably many others, I started behind the rest of the Kindergarten class and didn't catch up until law school. I never knew what was going on in class. The class was constantly three steps ahead of me. It completely degraded my scholastic confidence. I had a high IQ, but I went through school believing that I was a mediocre student...and so that's what I became.
I believe that building scholastic confidence must begin very early. It's not that a person can never build scholastic confidence late in life...I certainly did. But, a lack of confidence early on can take years and years to overcome.
So, I believe that pre-school reading is one way to instill confidence in children. I made the commitment to teach my daughters how to read before they started school and I can see the impact even in Kindergarten. Like me, my daughters have late birthdays, so they're young for their grade. And, like me, they are the smallest in their classes. But, because they are such advanced readers, it has given them tremendous confidence. They feel like they can do anything. They talk about their classroom successes after school and much of it flows from their reading abilities.
Now, I don't happen to know how to teach reading. And I didn't want to teach them the wrong way. So in addition to reading them children's books every night, I turned to what I believe is the greatest beginner reading book ever made. The book is called, "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons." It was produced by Siegfried Engelmann, Phyllis Haddox, and Elaine Bruner. You can find the book at the following website: http://www.worldlanguage.com/Products/459287.htm
I don't know these people and I don't get anything for referring others to them. But, this book was referred to me by my kids' swimming teacher, and it is one of the best referrals I have ever received. I invested 20 minutes per night with each one of my daughters, generally 4-5 nights per week. I began their instructions when they were four-years-old (just after they learned all of the upper and lower case letters). And they each finished the 100 lessons in around 10 months. Now they are all great readers and very confident little girls.
Comments