Military precision

Husbandio and I attended our first ever school parents' consultation evening tonight which, not that I was concerned, went very well. The affair itself was choreographed to the second - each set of parents had an allocated ten minute slot, and the head teacher announced the changeover from one set of parents to another by ringing a bell. One of the other mums told me she was so aware that they had to finish when the bell rang that she stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence, got up, thanked the teacher and left!

Ten minutes doesn't feel like very long when you're talking about a subject of such central importance as your child's progress, but I suppose with 30 kids to a class it's difficult to squeeze in any more. As it was, the appointments were held over two days. One of things I'd wanted to ask was about Isabel's reading: I have no benchmark against which to judge her progress, so while it seems to me that she's doing brilliantly, I wanted to hear that from someone more qualified! I also wanted to ask if we could start taking home some reading books with actual words in them, and found out more about why the discussion books are useful (shows the kids that, when they're writing stories, there's no right or wrong way of telling it - the story can do what you want it to, and there might be more than one way of interpreting it). We've been promised reading books with words after half term provided she can read her keyword set by then - all of those keywords will be featured in the first books which gives the kids a real confidence boost, since they'll actually be able to read these books properly. How exciting! Will definitely be working on her keywords over half term. I really don't feel I'm forcing this on her though - the first thing she wanted to do when she got home at lunchtime today was to get out her new keywords and go through them. Her idea, not mine!

My only worry now is that the books she'll be getting will be distinctly uninspiring. The school uses the Oxford Reading Tree series, and I found an article today which complained about how turgid the content of these can be. If the ones with words are anything like the ones without, I'm not expecting too much. But then, how exciting can these books be when they contain such a limited set of words? I'm just looking forward to seeing how pleased with herself she will be when she reads through her first book by herself.

Plans for getting more reading done

Thank goodness, I worked my way through The Hippopotamus, and have moved onto Stephen King's Duma Key. Still struggling to find time to get any proper reading in though -bedtime seems the only reasonable option so far, but I'm usually so tired by that point that I fall asleep, drop the book and lose my place. Maybe going to bed earlier might be a good idea!

I'm hoping that maternity leave will give me a chance to catch up a bit - I have a lovely mound of Christmas books to work my way through, and have just been lent four murder mysteries, all of which look really good. I can see an upcoming reading opportunity though and it's this: breastfeeding. Keep reading, this does make sense, I promise. When I was breastfeeding Isabel, I could never manage to have the telly on (she used to try to twist round, while remaining clamped onto me, in her efforts to see the screen - really quite painful), but I could always read. I used to glory in that 40 minute feed before bed time (it probably didn't need to be that long, but I loved it because it was just solid reading time). Night feeding is less fun, since I always did it in the dark because I didn't want her to think it was time to get up and play. 40 minutes of sitting in the dark staring at a digital clock I could do without, but I've realised that this could be an excellent excuse for me to invest in the iPod Touch which I've been craving for ages, and read an e-book. Or I could buy the audio book edition of whatever I'm reading in print, and carry on from where I left off! All this will take some planning I think....

One thing I am reading more of, while we're on the topic, is children's classics. Isabel's always been a book fiend (inherited from both Husbandio and myself, I think!) and we've now started going through the books which I kept from my childhood - longer books than can be read in a single sitting, in other words. We've spent the last week reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and it's just marvellous, beautifully written and she's been entranced. Once we finished, we watched the 1970s movie (with Gene Wilder) and will watch the Johnny Depp one soon too. Then it's on to Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and then the world's our oyster. Suggestions for other books to follow are most welcome!