Summer Reading Program: Attempting to Instill a Love for Reading

Posted by Jeremy in education, family, simple living

Today we unveiled the summer reading program for my 6 & 8 y.o sons. It is modeled strongly after their Advanced Reading program at school. in fact we used the reading list and point values to determine the value of the books they'd be reading.

They have been anxiously awaiting the incentives list. We started asking what kind of things they'd like as "prizes" for their hard work. Once we had an idea of what would motivate them, we started crunching the numbers to see just how much they'd have to read to "earn" their rewards. They were so excited to see that with 200 points each they could combine their efforts to get a Wii. And to sweeten the pot, we offered to get them a puppy if they reached 1,000 combined points. DW has been very firm in her resistance to getting a dog, at least until our financial situation is a little brighter. So, for perspective, 1,000 points would require them reading about 150 pages per day, each, for the entire summer.

Here is the list of lesser prizes:

• 10 points - Personal Bag of Candy - your choice
• 25 points - Lunch at Sandwich shop, new t-shirt, new hat,
• 35 points - DVD, two new T-Shirts, new pair of shorts, new Sunday tie
• 50 points - Lunch date with Daddy to restraunt of your choice
• 60 points - One Video game
• 75 points - Special Dinner - your choice
• 100 points - Two Video games
• 125 points - Day to the Zoo or Wild Animal park
• 150 points - RC Car
• 175 points - Tickets to Monster Truck Show, or other event of the boys choice at the Stadium (w/ a friend)
• 200 points - Hand held game system (PSP, etc)

The boys were really excited, and were practically dragging me out the door to go to the library to get started. At the library, my 6 y.o. was pulling out books probably better suited to middle school-aged children and acting discouraged when I'd tell him they were a little above his level. But, an hour later, they had compiled 9 books that would net a total of 56 points. Let's just hope they can maintain this level of enthusiasm through the entire summer. My hope is that it will carry through to the school year and they might want to be competitive in the school reading program.

If you have any interest in starting a reading program of your own, I'd be happy to send a copy of the book list (a 200+ page PDF document) and the formula we use for calculating the points based on the list's point values. If I get 10 or more comments on this post, I will upload and put a link to it on this post.

Happy reading this summer.