Summer Reading Motivation!

For some of us, we have children who make us proud in the reading department. We can't tear them away from books of all sorts and descriptions.

What about those of us whose children need extra motivation?

What if you could set a goal of a certain number of books, or chapters, for your child to read, and have a visual way to keep track?

Well, I have an idea for you.

It's simple, and appeals to many ages. It can also be adapted to many other uses. 

First go online and Google "free printable 100 chart." You will be presented with a ton of options. Find one that speaks to you. 

We found the one pictured below here. 

If you need something with less squares on it, by all means don't limit yourself to a hundreds chart. Any large grid graph paper can be adapted to your purposes and then photocopied.

So how do we implement it?

In our case, we are choosing to let the kids read a book/chapter, according to their reading level or tolerance, and fill in the boxes on the chart. When the chart is full, they get ten dollars. The amounts are relative and can be adapted to the goal you set for your child. 

To make the chart effective,  make sure the chart  gets posted where it'll be motivating to the child, and they will see it often. 

If you have multiple children, you may find they urge each other on if they charts are all together, and they can have a healthy competition going on.

If your children work better with a co-operative approach, then by all means approach it from that stand point. You may find that setting a date goal for all  to have the chart filled, will do nicely. Then the group works together to finish as a group, rather than there being a competition over who can fill the chart first.

There are all sorts of ways to fill the boxes: stickers, bingo dabbers, markers, stamps, crayons and pencil crayons are all great things for the kids to use. If you prefer, the parent's initials are also an option.

Enjoy, and Happy Reading!

Jen