"First grade is all about reading"

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My daughter is a reader.

No, she wouldn't make it through the first page of "War and Peace," but she can get through the short story "Sam the Cat" as easily as I can breathe.

I don't have the words to accurately describe how much I marveled at her reading that simple little story. I know I was smiling from ear to ear with each sentence she finished.

This is soooo different than the sight word reading sessions my husband and I had with her when she was in the kindergarten. Too often, those ended with someone in a bad mood as she would get frustrated with the harder words and my husband would get frustrated with her as her attention span waned and she would stop trying.

But now that she's in first grade, it's like someone flipped the "reading" switch in her brain to "on." If she says she cannot read a word, we say, "Sound it out," and she does so quickly. And we're less than a week into the school year!

So I tell her how wonderful she's doing, but add, "So what else have you been learning?"

"Nothing," she tells me.

"Nothing? No math?" I ask.

"First grade is all about reading," she tells me. "That's what the teacher says."

I don't think first grade will be "all about reading" for the whole school year; surely they'll have some math lessons as well.

But I cannot argue with how much success first grade has been for her so far.