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Getting Ready to Meet Felicity and Kaya

Samantha has been invited to an American Girl summer book club.  She is so excited. This is the first personal invitation she's received to be part of a group or club. She's especially excited because it's a book club, since she loves to read, and it's an American Girl book club, since she loves and has American Girl dolls. She needs to read two books, Meet Felicity and Meet Kaya, before the end of next week. She's almost done with the first book.  To prepare, I've gone through the book and picked out words that she's not familiar with, like fret, ginger, harness, scoundrel, breeches, tannery, to help her with word meaning and comprehension. I wanted to create my own list at SpellingCity, but then as I did a search for Meet Felicity, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were a number of lists already created by other members, which we can use. These word games give a boost to her reading comprehension. While some of these may be words that most girls her age would know, they're not words that we use in our everyday conversations or that she may have read too often in other books. Also, Samantha has Down syndrome, so her vocabulary knowledge is not as extensive as a typical child her age. Which is why I'm so glad that she is an avid reader. The more she reads, the more her vocabulary will grow and the more her comprehension will improve.
She reads every opportunity she gets.
To be sure she's understanding what she's reading, after she's read a few pages, I ask her what she's read. If she doesn't have a good understanding of it or if she cannot answer some of my questions, I'll read it with her again. It's okay if we read the book repeatedly. The important thing is that she read the book from beginning to end and that she understands the flow of the story, the problem in the story and the solution in the story. We also talk about lessons to take away from each story, the characters and what she thinks of each character. Sam and I haven't done a book club before. So I look forward to her being a part of this with other girls and their moms. It'll give her an opportunity to hear the girls discuss the books and to have some input into conversations. This is an area that Samantha really needs practice in, and this will be the perfect setting for her. She'll be with friends who know her and care about her, and she'll be familiar with the topic of conversation. I'll tell you more later about our book club experience. In the meantime, I'd love to hear your experience with book clubs. Maybe share with us some ideas we can bring to share with our friends.



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