Kids Love A Challenge!

Our Reading Challenge

Happy April!!!!

Doesn't every kid love a good challenge?  Mine sure do! In fact as a teacher in the classroom years back, I think one thing that made me a good teacher is that I was always looking for additional ways to stretch my students and challenge them to learn more, grow more, and do better.

Julia and Mark and I are winding down the school year.  All we have left are about 25 Math lessons, 3 Spelling Lessons, and a few pages in our reader.  We will be done with our Bible Curriculum on May 1st when Awana is finished.  Right now we are enjoying learning about Amy Carmichael  (Julia's extra credit Awana booklet since she finished the original book in Dec.)

I wanted to think of ways we can continue to learn over the summer months since we will be done with school mid May (but we will start Aug. 4th our Fall Semester before baby arrives).  Julia and Mark love the library and love to read so I created a Reading Challenge.

Each week we will visit the library at least once a week (Monday seems to work well for us).  The kids can stock up on some books, and in addition read some books from our own collection.  The goal is for Julia to read 20 books a week (she read 5 today so I do not think this will be a problem).  Mark's goal is 7 books a day since we basically do most of the reading for Mark still.

There is now a Longaberger basket by our front door for all of the library books and DVD's we take out (the basket ensures that we don't put library books on our own bookshelves and cause mommy to have late fees)  It's also easy access so when we know our next library trip is coming up we grab our books to be returned and stock up on the new ones.

We have a clipboard and paper to be attached to the basket with a pen.  And each week the kids get to tally up how many books they read.  They must reach their assigned goal but they are of course allowed to go over.  If they complete their goal for the week then on Friday/Saturday they will get a special reward.  This reward will change from time to time.  Like this week I have two coupons to Baskin Robbins so on Friday I will take them out to ice cream if they reach their goal.  But next week we may just run to Dollar Tree for a prize.

I'm super excited about our Reading Challenge!  I explained all the rules today in the car after we left the library and the kids read their books for the rest of the day.  Like I said....this will not be a problem!  I set attainable goals and having a reward each week will be fun for all of us!  We are excited to finish the rest of the school year strong!

Happy Reading!