Rian and Reading

Rian has been going to Champion School since Jan 2011. The main reason to select this school was their claim that they can get 3-year old children to read. Before Rian went to school at 2 and a half years, he had his A to Z and his 1 to 10 down pat already, so we thought this is a good school fit for Rian with his natural inclination towards reading and books.

Sure enough by his third birthday Rian knew the phonics for all alphabets and was reading single vowel words. The school has encouraged and moved Rian (along with other kids) to higher level for reading. At 4 years and 3 months, Rian reads a lot, flawlessly. We encourage him a lot at home and read every day with him, and extra reading on weekends. He loves it and keeps asking for more and more.

Every 4 weeks we get a different set of books from the library. Every library trip Rian decides which books he's done with and okay to return, and which ones he wants me to keep and renew. I just love this interaction with him about books and library and his curiosity for new things. Big thanks once again to Daddy for fueling his curiosity - else Rian's natural selection is always just train books :D

Here's a page from a level 4 book about Submarines that Rian read without hesitation. This is grade 1-2 reading by school standards.

Page from a level 4 book about submarines

His favorite Mausami aunty picked a kite gift for him and Rian read all the assembly instructions himself. Here's a video on youtube.

May you keep this love for reading always...

Rian's world of trains

Rian's most favorite thing in the world is trains. I've mentioned this earlier on the blog. Ever since his third birthday though, the craze has gotten more intense. Cely had gifted him a Geotrax train set, and with it came a Geotrax DVD with 4 stories. This is one of his favorite things to watch on TV (the first TV craze was watching Lightning McQueen in Cars, and the latest one is watching Lego trains). The occasional trips with Cely via VTA were the highlights of his week and his love for Cely. In April this year, Rian learnt how to ski and one of the motivations for him was to get a Lego train. This would combine his love for Legos with his love for trains. Lego City 7938 became a major hit with Rian and has been one of our best bribes to him. Accessories started flowing in, Rian got tracks, flexible tracks, switching tracks and his train set spanned our family room floor all the time. Andrea gave him the Emerald night and Rian was overjoyed.

In summer this year, Rian transitioned to longer school hours. For a year and a half from Jan '11 to June '12, Rian went to school from 8:30am to 11:30am. In summer school this year, Rian stayed from 8:30am to 3pm. It was hard for Rian to fall asleep at school, without Cely, without us. One of the main bribes we used again was his playtime with his trains - you sleep at school, you get to play with your trains. Rian understood it and gets to play with the trains 90% of the days now.

From the day Rian grasped the concept of "what will I be when I grow up", it has always been something to do with trains. First it was a monorail conductor. Disney monorail was his favorite after visiting Disneyland around his third birthday. He stayed at the "I want to be a train conductor" status quo for a long time. One day Cely told him the person who controls the train is actually the "train operator", so off Rian went around, telling everyone that now he wanted to be a "train operator".

Night time stories just before bed were a good time to expose Rian to new concepts. Rian always wanted to hear train stories. They get a bit repetitive for parents after a while. One day Rian asked Daddy (or maybe Daddy convinced Rian to hear) about how trains are built. Off went Daddy describing the design process. On the following night when it was Mumma's turn, a sequel to "how are trains built" followed. Slowly, Rian grasped the concept that the "train engineer" was an important person and he got to design trains the way he wanted. We started reading in various kiddie train books that the "train engineer" was the one who operated the steam trains. So Rian's latest is "I want to be a train engineer when I grow up".

Last night, Rian impressed me again - which is the main reason I'm writing this post. We were coming back from his swim class. Rian loves the fish aquarium in his swim school, I think it's a perfect addition in a swim school. Here's the conversation as I remember it:

Rian: Mumma I will have some fishes my train.
Me: Oh, like the fish aquarium in swim school?
Rian: Yes, and there will be many fishes. And there will be one big fish.
Me: Wow, very cool! What color will be your fishes?
Rian: Any colors, they can be anything. Mumma, I will ask my train conductor what his favorite color is. If the conductor likes red, I'll have red fishes. I can have any color like red, pink, orange.

I was stunned to hear this fellow wants to have fish of a color that is someone else's favorite color! What do you say to that? Good thinking Rian, you are already thinking about how to make others feel loved! Definitely Dad's traits again ;-)