The highlight of our day was spontaneously deciding to celebrate D.E.A.R. Day.
D.E.A.R. stands for Drop Everything and Read and is a national day to celebrate reading typically held on April 12 in honor of Beaverly Cleary’s birthday. Beaverly Cleary wrote about her character celebrating her own DEAR Day in Ramona Quimby, Age 8.
It was a somewhat spontaneous celebration for us because I had planned weeks ago to celebrate this day in our homeschool, and then I promptly forgot about it in my Spring-induced rush to *just be done with school already *. We haven’t been having a lot of fun…it’s been work, work, work around here.
My kids noticed on a calendar in the devotional magazine they read that today was DEAR day and they brought it up to me, saying that they were planning to read every free moment they had today. I suggested a reading day and they were thrilled!!
In order to make room for a new treadmill in my room, we moved Keith’s recliner into Will’s room. He loves this “reading chair” and spent most of his day reading in that very comfortable spot.
EA recently finished reading the entire Harry Potter series and she’s now reading an American Girl book that she received for Christmas. Both girls love reading up on the time periods that the historical American Girl Dolls represent. They checked out “Josephina’s World” from the library last week.
MC is making her way through the first Harry Potter book. She was motivated to read it after seeing how much her sister loved these books!
Jenny isn’t a fluent reader yet, but we’re making lots of progress in getting there! And there is a great desire to read chapter books like her big brother and sisters.
Along with their reading, we also read our current read-aloud books from school. Currently we’re reading Miracles on Maple Hill and Tales of Robin Hood.
Even I found made time to get started on a new book today, The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton. I think it’s so important that not only do we encourage our children to be readers, but that we demonstrate a love of reading ourselves.
I hope you had a great day and possibly even found a few moments to enjoy a good book yourself!