Anyone else's kids rocking the summer reading clubs? We are only three weeks in and DD has finished our library's four times over. I have had to make up my own that are twice as hard. DD(4.5) has been reading on average 3 hours a day. And, that is not counting what we read to her (about 45 minutes a day.)

She has been finishing two or three rainbow magic or magic treehouse books a night after lights out--with her book lamp, and in the span of about an hour before we make her go to bed. We are not sure we can let her keep this up.

Her fluency has improved so much just in the last few weeks. (She read Pippi Longstocking to DH without much effort.) So, the motivation has been great. She is a fast reader. If anyone has any links to difficult reading clubs, please post them!

I never recall the library summer reading programs dictating what the kids should read. When I was growing up, they did award prizes based upon number of books read, so the kids reading the longer, more complex books would never win. Now they track time spent reading, and the awards are more individual goal awards (but your kiddo would clearly win everything they offer if she reads three hours a day).

Do you have to go to that particular library? We happen to live close to the county line, and a library in the next county is much closer to us than our own municipal library. There is an easy way in our state (PA) to sign up so that you can use any library in the state - don't know if it works that way where you are.

Our local library does one every year, and DD8 always breezes through them. When she was younger, we were the family walking away with a stack of a dozen books for DD (plus a handful of choice selections for the adults). The stack is much more manageable now, since she's reading so much more concentrated fare.

This year's program is based on the number of hours read, not books read. For DD's age group, 12 hours gets you a free, 30-minute tennis lesson. This means they're getting kids reading AND exercising... double-win.

I confess that I find these to be a lot of work for me, so I tend to avoid them. (Where's the bag-over-head smiley?) My kids are constantly reading for 15 minutes here, another 15 there, 20 here, 10 there...ugh. I don't want to track that, and they aren't really going to. Plus our library's prizes suck (like, bookmarks and pencils). DD did do it once in an organized way and got her picture on the "super reader" board, which she liked.

DD especially never goes anywhere without a book...in the car, in the bathroom ("Honey, how many minutes did you just read in the bathroom?)...

With ultra here. My kids graze on books. We did have one ambitious summer where someone got to be a prize reader. But they've decided they don't care about the program... and will continue to graze.

DeeDee

Here's one for Barnes & Noble: http://img1.imagesbn.com/pimages/kids/summerreading/2013/bnsummertearpad.pdf

I've heard Scholastic has one as well.


Our library does one for all ages- kids mark off each 20 minutes they read, teens mark each hour, and adults just write down the titles of their books. Prizes are coupons to local restaurants and entries to win bigger prizes.

I recognize my kids are not the target audience of summer reading programs so I don't sweat that it doesn't really fit.

DS just brought home a plastic cockroach as his first prize.

DD estimates time. DD estimates 3/4 minute per page, and then estimates time read when she finishes books. She doesn't bother tracking the grazing reading of the newspaper or magazines lying around.

Neither are motivated by the little prizes, but are motivated by the top 100 reader contest, which last year required about 10-12 hours of reading each week.

Mine aren't motivated by the prizes either... those programs/contests actually seem to turn them off. I just let them read what they want during the summer. DS9 is reading The Little Prince right now (I love that book!) and DD7 is attempting to read diary of a wimpy kid.

Our library's summer reading club requires no work from me. The kids are supposed to fill in a bubble for every 15 minutes read. We told DD to fill in a bubble for every chapter read (and then changed that to every two chapters for the easier books.) DD takes care of it all by herself. She brings a few books and her log everywhere she goes.

DD just loves it, but she is four and still motivated by the little prizes (which we are now inventing because I won't take any more from the library--trips for ice cream, a donut, a candy bar. She will do anything for sweets.

I just assumed the library a town over was using the same system. I'll have to check. The Barnes and Nobel one is to read five books. I checked out the scholastic reading club. That will require more work from me. It would be neat to see how much she is actually reading. I'll probably continue to make my own bubble sheets.

The bubble system is pretty good, I think. I don't know. I hate to encourage fibbing, and we would totally be guesstimating in a major way. DD has a tendency to overestimate this kind of thing, too (she's in a fibby phase).

Our program requires no work whatsoever on my part. It's pretty much on the honor system, where the parent just signs saying their kid did the required 12 hours of reading. Since DD reads for at least 15 minutes before bed, almost every night, it's a no-brainer for me to sign.

They do have another program where the kids can read X number of books on subjects A, B, and C, and earn prizes based on that. That one would at least require us to ensure DD is checking out the right number of the right books, and then reading them.

Our DD has yet to find a prize that can be won that she doesn't want, no matter how stupid or useless.

Yes. DD is in an anti-fibby phase. But, it is definitely an estimation. I feel a little better knowing we are not counting the time we read to her or audiobooks. I would not enter her in any formal contest anyway.

I mean, ours is honor system too, but IIRC, you have to report the date, the time, and the name of the book on each date...oy. So ours would be, you know:

6/13: Harry POtter and the Goblet of Fire (3rd rereading of the series in a row--yes, DD is over her "I hate HP" thing): 8:15-8:37, 1:15-1:45, 3:15-3:45, 6:15-6:27, 7:25-9:15

I mean, kill me now.

The time?! That just seems sadistic. I should think start and end dates for books should suffice or, heaven forbid it, just a list of the books read.

I think what they're actually trying to kill is any enjoyment of reading. Because once you turn anything into a clock-watching exercise, all the joy is gone.

Wow, that is crazy...lots of work and just too much monitoring. DD always has her head in a book. She will sit in the bathroom for an hour even if I let her. Not to mention after I leave her room at night. I have no clue how long she reads then, although I have had to go in at midnight in the past when I heard noise and take the book away (she's 6).
Out library just lets the kids set their personal goal and they get a prize for reaching it, and for participating. DD set her goal at 60 chapter books. She's ambitious. Dh are supplementing the prizes on our own with things she really wants. A dollar for every 5 read, her own milk shake from a local restaurant that makes AMAZING ones, for every 10. She just finished White Fang, so not short little chapter books either.
They also have a sheet where you mark off time read, but I am so not doing that. There is no way I could ever keep up with every 15 minutes she reads. Seriously, I could just go ahead and cross out everything on those after a week because she reads that much. If I had to estimate yesterday, I would say she read over 3 hours, I do know she read at least 250 pages yesterday. LOL, the library probably wouldn't believe me if I wrote that down.

Our library system's summer reading program is pretty easy, just color in a small picture for every 30 minutes. DD has been timing herself, DS just guesstimates and gets my approval first. Last year the prize was a free book and small tote bag, plus a handful of coupons for local museums.

The Half Price Bookstore has a summer reading program, if you have one of those in town. I believe the prizes are gift cards to the store.

DS had a reading program at school that involved writing down the names of books and number of pages read during the month. When he was in first grade, and he read out loud mostly to me, it was pretty easy. In second, when he was tearing through novels when we weren't looking, it was a total PITA to track down which books he had read. Since he didn't seem to care enough to help me figure it out, I stopped doing it. He certainly didn't need a carrot to get him to read more. (Although I suppose his class lost points because he wasn't participating. Oh well.)

I miss the library and school programs. My DD is 15 - almost 16 now. I just wanted to join in. My daughter and I are doing our second Mother/Daughter book - "Joy Luck Club". We are going to study China and concubines (not something I'd do with a younger child).

We are going to watch the movie and also "Raise the Red Lantern". This is the way we celebrate books now at her age.

You know, most summer reading programs at the local library is run by just a couple of people. I mentioned to the children's librarian that I felt that the grand prize of a video game system (going to one child via a drawing), kind of sent the wrong message. She listened, and I gather I wasn't the only parent who thought this was an issue, as the grand prizes have been more appropriate since.

If you were to describe what this system looks like in practice, they very well may listen. I suspect they're thinking about kids who need to be told to go do their reading, instead of kids who spontaneously pick up anything (and everything) to read.

We have a kind of combination thing here -- the library has its own, but it also accepts the school's sheet. The school's sheet wants 20 minutes a day, five days a week, and each month's reading log gets an entry into a drawing for prizes. The library asks you to sign up for your own goal, and then has prizes along the way and drawings at the end for bigger prizes.

I'm totally with ultra and DeeDee here -- I find it impossible to get myself to bother with logging things, and eventually at the end of summer we fudge the whole thing. Assuming they have actually been reading. I allowed DS10 one log's worth last summer because he read some, but not a lot, but DD7 got all of them because she reads all the time. I just can't manage to fill things out and keep track as they go, when I'm at work all day. This year I told them it's their own responsibility to fill things out, and you can guess how well that's working out.

You would think that being able to turn in each two weeks' log for free ice cream at the local store would be enough to get them to do it, but no.

I sent a note to the school librarian on the last day of the reading program at school this year that said, "DD9 has read for at least 900 minutes since {start date}," and that was good enough for her to get her reward.

This is basically what we are doing. DD seems to crave the bubble sheet, though. She uses it as a bookmark along with a crayon. Now that I think about it, it is a very four-year-old thing to do.

If she wasn't keeping track herself, I probably would not bother. I'll probably never get around to doing the Barnes&noble one, because that requires me to write the titles and recommendations down.

Yes!!

DD loves Amy Tan-- are you enjoying it?

As for tracking reading-- I made up a notebook that I kept with a box when DD was younger-- she simply put in what she had finished reading. A couple times a week (er-- when the box got full, basically), I'd record the ISBN, title, pages, estimated reading level, and genre of the book.

We never tracked TIME because of how fast she reads, and frankly, the volume. She topped many THOUSANDS of pages each month for the years that I kept track of it. I stopped doing it by the time she was seven, but I still have the records.

She's read all but a handful of the Newbery books (honorees as well as winners) and those mostly because they are out of print. That was a goal one year.

I had to laugh about the plastic cockroach. Oh my gosh, my DD would come home with some of the weirdest things from the library's program. LOL.

We do a couple local library summer reading programs. Both our girls still get excited about drawing from the prizes and I try to sway them from the "junk" but not always successfully. The big prize, for anyone that reaches the goal, is either a free entry to the local water park or free food certificates, so it is worth it to us. We also do the state summer reading challenge that the governor puts on.

Last year we did the Barnes & Noble program and received free books. One was Apple Fractions and I can't remember the others.

We have also looked into (at one time or another) the Books-A-Million, Scholastic, Half Price Books, Book-It, Pottery Barn, Sylvan, American Girl, and Amazon reading programs. We haven't participated in any of these yet.

I just figure if they are going to be reading anyway, I may as well do the paperwork and turn it in so they can be rewarded for it.

Oh and don't forget Chuck E. Cheese too - for free tokens.

Nothing formal here. Both DH and I read aloud to DS11 (I'm so glad he still wants us to) and DS and I are matching each other book for book in a friendly competition. He gets to choose which books to read and while they aren't all difficult, they're no longer the junk-food books either. Now and then I'll ask him a question about character, author choices, setting etc. just to get him thinking about his own writing.

Okay, I looked it up and I don't see clock times anymore. Maybe I am making that up. You are supposed to put the date, though. So I need to track reading time each day (yes, they could do it...but they won't, and that would be a high bar for DS5, I'd say).

Thanks HK

Yes, I have read it before but I am enjoying the reread. We made a coconut stir fry last night to go with the book. It has some difficult things to discuss, but she is old enough to know about concubines and other difficult things for women. We are mostly reading it due to the mother/daughter relationships.

Ah yes, the concubine discussion with a younger child. A few years ago my son, who I think was about 9 at the time, was at the shore with my in-laws reading a book he had borrowed from the children's / middle grade section of our library. DS asked my in-laws what a concubine was -- and totally caught them off guard! Luckily FIL quickly said "female slave" and they all left it at that (other than the obligatory question to me -- "what are you letting him read?").

My kids liked the library program when they were younger -- they're suckers for those plastic cockroaches! But we don't bother anymore -- the two older ones read for pleasure while the younger one would rather sit with his sudoku and puzzles.

DD has not slowed down much. She is still reading approximately 2-3 hours a day depending on the day. After finishing our library's reading club (4x 12 hours), we did travel over to a nearby library to also finish their bubble sheet (which was actually circles divided into pie pieces but also equaling 12 hours of reading in the end.) She has also gone through three specially made reading clubs. I make them a little harder. They were each 20 hours long. The one she is on now is 75 hours long. She has also just read on her own while in between bubble sheets.

I have not yet completed any other kind of reading club for her. I did find a really nice reading list for K-3rd graders put out by the NEH. I plan on printing out this list and having her complete it (by filling in bubbles!) DD has already read half of them, but these are all great books, and she could stand to read them again and again. There is a 4th-6th grade list I'd like to work through as well. She just really seems to like the idea of being made to read right now. I'd definitely like to see her weened off these bubble sheets. I'm hoping by summer's end she will lose interests in them but keep on reading.

Also, Pottery Barn kids has a very simple reading club, and I think the prize is a free book. And, MENSA has a summer reading list that pulls from the NEH recommendations.

Here is the list from NEH:

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears: A West African Tale
Aesop’s Fables
Miss Nelson Is Missing!
Mr. Popper’s Penguins
Ivy + Bean
A Visitor for Bear
Madeline
Freckle Juice
Stone Soup
The Story of Babar, The Little Elephant
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
The Stories Julian Tells
The Mouse and the Motorcycle
Diary of a Worm
Strega Nona
Abuela
Petunia
The Hundred Dresses
Corduroy
Millions of Cats
My Father’s Dragon
My Family / En Mi Familia
The Reluctant Dragon
A Pocketful of Poems
Iris and Walter
The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales
Just Grace
Chrysanthemum
Bedtime for Frances
Saint George and the Dragon
Danny and the Dinosaur
Amazing Grace
Houndsley and Catina
Harold and the Purple Crayon
The Snowy Day
Leo the Late Bloomer
The Carrot Seed
Zelda and Ivy: The Runaways
Catwings
Story of Ferdinand
A Book of Nonsense
The Year of the Dog
Frederick
Frog and Toad are Friends
Paul Revere’s Ride
Put Me in the Zoo
George and Martha
Anansi the Spider
Winnie-the-Pooh
Little Bear
The Paper Bag Princess
Wings
The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
Amelia Bedelia
Clementine
The Little Engine that Could
Not a Box
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young
Curious George
Tar Beach
Henry and Mudge
Grandfather’s Journey
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs
Where the Wild Things Are
Green Eggs and Ham
Nate the Great
Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Caps for Sale
Mouse Gets Ready
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters: An African Tale
A Child’s Garden of Verses
Many Moons
A Tree is Nice
Crictor
The Garden of Abdul Gasazi
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Charlotte’s Web
There is a Bird on Your Head!
The Napping House
Crow Boy
Mouse and Mole: A Winter Wonderland
Harry the Dirty Dog
William’s Doll

My DD reads like crazy and has to keep track of time for our library summer reading program and for independent reading programs at school. I bought a few of these bookmark timers, as she will often have three books going at once. It's easy to keep track of time because all she has to do is push a button when she starts and stops reading. They are pretty inexpensive (about $9 each). You can find them at bookstores and office supply stores. Here's a link to Barnes and Noble for example:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/home-gift-mark-my-time-assorted-bright-color-bookmark/19908485

I was also going to add the Mensa list, which is what we're working on, as our library program requires 10 hours of reading and ds6 completed that in week one.

http://www.mensaforkids.org/content/school_readeraward.cfm

What I liked about the Mensa list was that it covers a range of classics, many of which we'd read... but a few we'd missed. (All of a Kind Family is on it and he's now reading several books by that author.) He reads hours each day and cries if someone trips or gets lost... so we're always looking for book ideas!

Hey, those are cool, ohmathmom! This cracked me up, though:

"The biggest challenge facing busy parents is how to monitor and record daily reading goals, often for more than one child at a time"

yes, definitely my biggest challenge.