Tuesday, June 23, 2009

BONUS BLOG: Summer Reading

My son has finished our local library's summer reading program. Two weeks into the program, and he is done! For every 5 books read, he got a prize - a kazoo, a book, a Crocs button, some other small toy and then a t-shirt with the year's theme on it. While I am proud of the volume of reading we have been doing, it does leave a lot of summer left. So we decided to start our own summer reading program.

I created a chart that lists the incentives and has lines for recording the date, the book title and whether it was something he read himself or something we read together. This is a good fit for my early-reader. Older readers might need something different - chapter books vs. comic books or hours of reading instead of finished books, etc.

Our incentives also reflect his interests. For every 25 books finished, he gets a kids meal at a restaurant of his choosing. For reading 100 books total, he will get a $10 gift card for Target. And for every 25 books he reads himself (out loud, so we can verify it and help with the reading) he gets a $10 gift card to Barnes and Noble (to buy more books to read!).

He is very excited about this program and the incentives. We found a Transformers folder to keep our sheets in and he likes to look at how many he has done already. If it works, we will keep it around for summers to come... and maybe even fall and winter and spring!

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