Posted Wednesday January 20th 2010 by Natasha Worswick

Wow, I can't believe we're already halfway through the first month of 2010! I hope you all had a good Christmas and a very happy new year.


We had a great time, and all the stimulation seems to have done our son Milo's motivation to read no harm whatsoever. To start with, there was so much for him to look at, with all the tinsel, baubles, cards and presents around the place. He loved pointing at all these glittery things and trying to reach for them. We made a point of reading lots of the greetings cards addressed to him, which he seemed to love, almost as if they were a tiny picture book story in themselves. Which, I suppose, they are.


One of the other things we did over the festive period was take Milo to the Tate Modern gallery. In fact we saw in 2010 there, mooching around the pop art exhibition, which was just the most fun we've had together as a family in a long time. I always find that I look at a piece of art and then have to read the little sign next to it to get a sense of what it's about. We read it aloud with Milo, and it was like we were walking around inside a giant picture book! It was fascinating too to get a sense of what he enjoyed and what he did not. There were lots of bright, bold colours for him to enjoy, and he really responded to those. Then, over lunch, we unleashed the artist-in-the-making with a pack of crayons, which he used on one of the Tate's paper menus. A true original artwork if ever there was one.


Of course, I've no way of knowing how (if at all) this stimulation has contributed to Milo's appetite for reading. But I have noticed over the past couple of weeks that he has been pointing out lots more things, like finding the mouse in every page of the That's Not My... books, or trying to draw my attention to brightly coloured clothes that he sees in his bedtime book. Together we're making our reading into much more of a conversation.


All of which makes me feel really excited about Milo's reading in 2010.

« back to blog