Rupert's 'Muffins for Moms' Feeds Young Minds

Photos by John Armato

Kaiden Terpoli enjoys a favorite book with his mom during Rupert Elementary School's Muffins for Mom morning reading program.

Blogger's Note: The following was provided by the Pottstown School District.

Spending early morning time with mom eating breakfast and reading one of your favorite books was a great way for more than 200 Rupert Elementary students to start the day.

Olivia Williams and her mom enjoy breakfast and a good story.

The Muffins for Moms program at Rupert Elementary was developed by Principal Matt Moyer as a way to build stronger school and family ties while encouraging students to take time every day to read.

"Study after study shows that early reading with children helps them learn to speak, interact, bond with parents and read early themselves, and reading with kids who already know how to read helps them feel close to caretakers, understand the world around them and be empathetic citizens of the world," according to a Feb. 17, 2018 article in The Washington Post.

But it shouldn’t end when kids begin to read on their own. “As they become independent readers, we tend to let them go, but even kids in older demographics love nothing more than that time with their parents,” Baker says. “We’re blown away that kids time and again said the most special time they recall spending with a parent is reading together,” according to Liza Baker, the executive editorial director at Scholastic.

Veronica Williams and her mom enjoy a morning story.

"A child’s reading level doesn’t catch up to his listening level until eighth grade. You can and should be reading seventh grade books to fifth grade kids. They’ll get excited about the plot and this will be a motivation to keep reading," according to Jim Trelease, the author of the respected, Read-Aloud Handbook, which some parents have called the “read aloud Bible.”

"A fifth grader can enjoy a more complicated plot than she can read herself, and reading aloud is really going to hook her, because when you get to chapter books, you’re getting into the real meat of print — there is really complicated, serious stuff going on that kids are ready to hear and understand, even if they can’t read at that level yet" he told Great Schools.com.

Rupert student Matthew Stingone and mom make reading fun.

Reading aloud to your kids is also are good way to grapple with difficult issues. 

For example, you can tell your child, “I don’t want you to hang out with so and so,” but that’s a lecture that will probably go in one ear and out the other, according to Trelease. 

But if you read a book about a kid who gets in trouble by hanging out with the wrong crowd, your child is going to experience that directly, and she’s going to experience it with you at her side, and you can talk about it together.