It's All In The Stars

My mom is visiting us for the holidays, and we took advantage of the beautiful, warm, spring-like weather yesterday to take the kids to a local park for fun and recreation. Last month, a new memorial was installed there for Veteran's Day. Unlike so many vet memorials, this one stops you in your tracks and drapes its poignancy upon you. We spent some time at the memorial, looking it over and reading all the inscriptions.

My son Astro (so called because he appends "Astronaut-in-Training" to his name when introducing himself), who is four and a half, wanted Grandma to see one particular inscription. Grandma dutifully came over to where Astro was standing, and watched with gaping mouth as Astro proceeded to read almost the entire inscription without assistance.

"Wow, he's doing a lot more than the H**ked on Ph*nics books!" she exclaimed.

Which is true. He reads all on his own from the Dr. Seuss books, a Mickey Mouse "Learn To Read" collection, and many others in our home library, including a reprint collection of the Dick and Jane books. He reads the Dick and Jane books to his little sister Rainbow just before they go to sleep at night. Astro even sometimes reads what I'm typing or reading on the computer, and can read quite a bit from newspapers (even if he doesn't really understand the concepts).

But he really gets excited when he completes another H*P book. I mean, he dances around and shouts and has to run to Daddy and read the book to him, and then he gets a STAR on his chart and -- if he were a puppy, he'd be making a puddle on the floor, that's how excited he gets. For books with three- and four- letter words that all share the same vowel sound. When he can do far more complex stuff.

Why is this?

I think it has something to do with The Chart. There's a chart we have up on our bulletin board, and each time he reads a book, he gets a star-shaped sticker placed on the chart next to the name of the book he's just completed.

So I'm thinking...

• star chart for putting laundry in hamper instead of middle of the bedroom floor


• star chart for each hour that passes without him tormenting his little sister


• star chart for wiping his own bottom after using the facilities (he's recently become adverse to doing this)

and so on.

Star charts everywhere...think it'll help?