Story Teller

We're going on a bear hunt we're going to catch a big one, it's a beautiful day we're not scared!

We hear these words a lot at the moment. Toddler loves this book and now knows most of the words by heart. She works her way through the book using the pictures to prompt the order of the story which she says out loud. It is reading at its earliest stages.

She is really enjoying this type of reading at the moment and has now started making up stories also. Tonight as I put her pyjamas on (on her, not me) she started telling me a story about a dog called Princey Princey and a boy called Finn.

I am glad she likes books, When I was young I remember being one of the stronger readers when I started school, though a few years later I fell behind, probably because I enjoyed the telly box so much. My parents started buying me Story Teller magazine that had a cassette tape of all the stories in the magazine and you played the tape whilst you read along. This seemed to really work for me and got my reading up to speed.

I then sold all the magazines and tapes at a car boot sale for £7 which for a seven year old back in the early eighties was a right old wodge of cash.

Toddler gets her reading enthusiasm from Wife who reads more books in a year than I have read in my life. We often debate about the merits of books and the merits of the telly.

Yes I agree that books are a fine way to learn but I also maintain that I have learnt a lot from the telly box and that it should not be considered the bad tool of knowledge that Wife sometime claims. Mind you when I look at the telly I sat through last night (Eastenders, Britians Biggest Loser) I am not sure I would have learned quite so much these days.