Book-appetit!

October 18, 2016October 19, 2016Leave a comment

I have the habit of taking photos of what I read, and since I started TARC I also started to record the books I read to my students during every class, and share with their parents afterwards.

A nice way to describe this habit is ‘very organised’; less kind is what I also gladly admit as ‘OCD’. (Oppressive Compulsive Disorder). I used to keep book journals too, with the book cover printed out & stuck on a page where I wrote my thoughts about it. I know I’m going a bit too far…Anyhow…

While I take photos of my books (or books my kids read), I also always hear an inner voice of mine talking about them as if I were listening to a book critique – what’s the takeaway (message), how it resembles another book, why the book is popular, how do the authors research on the topics, why my 11-year old boy is reading a book about careers?!!? etc…

Then an idea came – if what a chef covers in his/her blog is about the seasonal ingredients, or a new dish new flavour, the blog of a reading club should naturally cover the books that we read/recommend/hate?

Great! That means I can start to put down all my thoughts about the books that I read, systematically, in one place that I can also share with other book lovers. That is what I am going to do with The Avid Reader Club Facebook Page

Each week, I will post a ‘Book-appetit’, a review by me, my family, and eventually my students. My ultimate goal is to advocate the love of reading for a wide selection of books. Be a risk taker, and expand your horizon and give every facet of this interesting world of books a try!

Book-appetit!

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A Book for A Book 2016

August 24, 2016August 24, 2016Leave a comment

It was back 3 years ago when I first started a book swap program among my kids’ friends.

The intention was very simple – reuse, recycle, reduce; save money, save space, share interest.

Every time when I try to clear my bookshelf, I feel bad that so many well-conditioned books which have left such wonderful reading memory to me are sadly discarded by my kids (a good problem maybe, since it means Ali & Mei Mei are really obsessed with reading and need more and more books…).

However, just the idea of throwing the books away simply hurts me. Donating them cannot really lessen much my guilty feeling of leaving books to the landfill. For me, all books are such treasure of thoughts from different people. They are living things. They are wisdom. They must be respected (I actually don’t allow my kids leave their books on the floor, or worst, step on them).

3 years ago, I decided to test the water, seeing how this concept could work. Each kids brought along 10-20 books they no longer read, put them together, and took their friends’ books. I gave this book swap program a name “A Book for A Book“, a funny pun of “An Eye for An Eye”, or like its Chinese translation “以牙還牙；倒不如以書還書“！

Not only can kids start to have more intellectual exchanges about books, they also cherish more the books their parents unconditionally bought for them. During the swap, I saw kids ask if they can have their books returned after their friends finish it, or a few of them agreed to take turn to read an interesting book. Of course, no need to mention how much money we parents can save, and how much we help to recycle, reuse and reduce!!

To celebrate the official launch of The Avid Reader Club, this year’s A Book for A Book was the largest ever! With more than 100 friends & guests came to our centre ATEC (One Island South) during the afternoon of Aug20, 2016, we collected a record high of 934 books for exchange! Thank you for joining us!!

For more photos, please visit The Avid Reader Club Facebook Page

After 3 years…it’s finally born!!

August 10, 2016August 17, 2016Leave a comment

First, I wouldn’t have imagined myself building a website single-handedly…after many trials and errors I’m finally on the last page “Blog”! Luckily I got my son (aged 11), a computer geek (relatively if at his age) who continuously fixed the glitches, links, image sizes and codes problem for me. Thank you Ali my dear! (but I’m really impressed by myself too! 😊）

What does this mean? If you don’t try it, you wouldn’t know you can do it! How wonderful it is that my love of reading can lead me to become a tech-literate too!!

The idea of setting up a reading club to read to children as a profession has been my dream since 2013. Back then I already realised the importance of reading aloud to my kids but noticed that such simple, costless but usually neglected habit actually help them excel so differently from kids who only focused on extra tuitions and spoon-feeding learning. I silently hoped to attest what I believe – by continuously adhering to the daily reading routine to my kids, abandoning the idea of extra tuitions, and awaiting the day when I could prove myself right.

Today I proved it, with much blessings, when seeing how my kids, now aged 9 & 11, flourish in all areas. They don’t get many trophies or certificates; they are not top students at school either (though one just got a full scholarship this year). They simply LOVE learning, yearning to go to school everyday, curious about things from all facets of life. Happy and positive, humble yet confident; not only do they know how to organise themselves but are always proactively helpful to others. All these wonderful traits of a good person…all are attributed to the good habit of voracious reading since young… Isn’t it what a parent would want to see in his/her child?

Now, The Avid Reader Club is officially launched. I hope to share my methods, tips and secrets with like-minded parents who either themselves are also an avid reader, or who hope to let the reading specialist coach their kids as one.

There is a saying that building a habit requires at least 100 times of repeating the action. If this is true, how nice such habit-developing process is! No pain, just gain!! It may only take you 20 minutes a day to read to your child to benefit him/her for life! So, what are you waiting for?