for the love of reading...

In our family, it more important to love to read than to read well. Don't get me wrong, we strive for excellence in all we do, but we believe if we can foster the love, the skill will naturally follow. The boys were starting to get a bit legalistic about the number of pages they read each day. So to entice them to want to read extra books we created a reading club. The older boys helped me come up with the rules. I had to think about how we adapt them to four year olds, so everyone could be involved. Here is what the Kelly reading club looks like:

Each time they read 4 book, they can choose a dessert at home. If they save up and read 6 books they can plan a family dessert for the whole family. If they choose to read 7 books they get to have a special dessert night with mommy or daddy. To encourage reading to siblings when the big boys read to the little ones, the book counts for both kiddos. We read to the kiddos a lot, but lately I realized we are skipping a lot of our favorite younger books for the 4 year olds. This program encouraged me (because they asked) to read their books too.

We choose dessert (for now)because the kiddos love to cook, but any reward will do.