So you begin with high hopes. You grab a book at your grade level. The first few weeks pass by easy enough. Then you spend some time chatting about use of metaphor or get interrupted in class. Every day, the finish line retreats. You don’t want to sacrifice quality of reading just to move faster […]

There’s nothing worse for a parent then under-estimating story time. “Uh-oh, it’s almost bed-time,” you think as you open your big-picture book and there’s still cover left. It’s not usually because the book is too hard to read. The problem lie in its secret cost: performance. Reading out loud change how fast a book can […]

The toddler wriggles in their seat, and the clock glares back at you, making you panic. Three books! There are two fingerplays. There is a craft activity. And now the whole thing seem to be coming down around itself. The energy is flagging and attention wanders. The goodbye song comes too late to salvage what […]

When you start that fat book, most of us starts with good intentions and vague math. You start with some kind of estimate in mind, some vague guess about how much time it’s going to take. I’ll read one chapter a night. That means I’ll be done by next Tuesday! It doesn’t always work that […]