Speed Read

I read fast. I always have, I like to read. This skill is only good if you have a lot of good books to read and time to read them, it was not helpful at all in reading textbooks, I would still fall asleep for those.

I read a book last night - 404 pages, less 42 pages at the start/end of chapters, assuming 10 words per line on average, 32 lines per page, it took me about 4 hours to read it. This means I read between 450 and 500 words per minute.

Apparently there's some guy who can read, ten. thousand. words per minute. There are not that many good words to read. That's too fast.

Anyway, read "The Woods" by Harlen Coben - good mystery, liked it. New author, yay!

Explosion

I'm not sure how this happens to SAHMs, but it does just the same as it happens to working moms - you look at your kid and he can suddenly do five more things than you thought he could and it completely blows your mind.

We've been watching SuperWhy and WordWorld (in addition to Land Before Time, oh I hate the Land Before Time) pretty exclusively these days and it's been, like, teaching my kid stuff. Stuff about words and sounding things out and that letters make up words and the light bulb has gone off in his head. We are writing letters, lining up letters, sounding things out - it's a whole new world. I don't know how long it will be from here to reading, but if the kid's whole hearted attention to a topic (see: cars, numbers and dinosaurs) is any indication, we should see progress.

Then there was the solar system lesson this morning, in which we cut out nine planets (and by we, I mean HIM) and wrote their names on them (sounding them out and with much help) and hung them on the wall. Tiny purple stars were even cut and taped to the wall. It was a half hour of focused learning there.

And for the final Holy Crap - he's interested in playing SONGS on the piano. Like, MUSIC. The boy wants to play MUSIC. Good grief.

So today, mind has been blown.