Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Cloudy with a chance of meatballs. My brother loved that book and often checked it out of the library in Fairhaven. However, Sammy seems to have some sort of mental block with reading. He CAN do it word by word but insists he cannot. I am struggling (along with the Special Education teacher) to figure out why. I want him to love books like I do. I want him to find his imagination wrapped in a book and create authentic enjoyment for them. He needs an outlet for that incredible imagination he has locked inside his amazing intellect. It’s dying to get out, I can see it bouncing around in there when I look into his eyes, much like a super bounce ball in a small room.
He does however LOVE the movie of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. How can I turn his love for movies into a love for reading? Is that fair? I hate the reward/token economy that we often fall into with Sammy. I feel it’s taking away an intrinsic need to be a good person and replacing it with stickers and dollar store treats. It works, for now. Will he ever get to a point where it doesn’t work anymore? What then? I guess that is a bridge we will cross when we get closer. Right now we are just to busy climbing the mountain to worry about it
He went off to school today chipper and woke up full of The Awesome ( http://blog.pigtailpals.com/2011/08/waking-up-full-of-awesome/)
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How do you get your child to read?
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Using the movie as motivation is absolutely fair. I know of one little guy who loves a character so much he will not only read anything about that character, he will read any book with a sticker of that character. If your child is willing to read Cloudy, try Pickles to Pittsburgh too and other Judi Barrett titles. If he needs a movie as motivation, most kids animated features (all of Disney) have a book attached-read the book with him, then watch the movie. Whatever works. I write a blog about books for kids with autism (http://www.autismreads.com) because we need more discussion on what and how our kids read. My boy likes absurdity and word play. I wish he liked stories, but a joke book is still a book. If your kid has an interest, I can almost guarantee there are books at almost any reading level about that interest.