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Monday, February 26, 2007

The Gift of Reading

I'm trying a little experiment in our house. I would like for Camille to start reading the books on our shelves, she's done a great job with the Nora Gaydos, Now I'm Reading books, the BOB books and other readers. I want a little diversity in her reading and she's not taking the initative. So...I'm giving her 10 books a week as a present. I require her to read at least 2 books a day but I often find that she doesn't like to choose the books. I have 40 books collected from our home library and I've made a checklist for her- maybe this will help my very structured daughter.

The books vary in reading level, some I feel will take a day to read such as Max Lucado's, Just the Way You Are and I may need to help her with some of her words, no big deal. Here's the checklist:

Week 1
c Little Loon and Papa
c Mouse Tales
c I can read with my eyes shut!
c The Cat in the Hat
c The Cat in the Hat Comes Back
c A Mud Pie for Mother
c Love You Forever
c I Took My Frog to the Library
c Max Cleans Up
c Spot Goes to the Park

Week 2
c Flossie & the Fox
c Marshmallow
c One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
c Maisy’s Bedtime
c Maisy Takes a Bath
c Maisy Dresses Up
c Just the Way You Are
c Jesus is my special friend
c The Ear Book
c The Foot Book


I have four weeks prepared as a test run. I have gathered the ten books and wrapped them in ribbon to keep them together and to present them to Camille as a present. I'm hoping that the sense of accomplishment with the checklist and being able to open another ribboned stack of books will be enough to motivate her into reading more. If this works, I'll recycle the ribbon as she unties a stack. We'll eventually have to move on to library books but we have a good size library to start with.

I'm also creating a reading log notebook for her, the list will be inside to check off after she reads the book. Here's the information she's recording about each book.

Date: _______________
Title: _______________
Author: _____________
Favorite Character: _____

She doesn't want to draw a picture about the book, which is fine. I think this is more than enough...she's so excited. The ribbon detail worked! I'm crossing my fingers this will catapult her into reading on her own in the long run!

 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Our local summer library reading programs are an easy way around here to motivate my reluctant readers! I realize it is for the summer, but boy, they love them! The prizes are very motivating, but it is mama who has a hard time doing the frequent library runs and tracking the reading of them all! :+)

You have some great choices there for her. Enjoy!

Warmly,
Kate

Jessica said...

Thanks Kate, the books listed are just the first two weeks. I'm horrible about library programs myself, but once we run out of books- we'll have to use the library. I just don't think we'll do any library programs. I'm trying not to complicate this! : )

Jules said...

I have made reading into an Amazing Race game for my boys. There are little prizes along the way. They have to answer questions about the books to get the next clue to tell them what to read next. They are reading chapter books, so the clues are done after a certain number of chapters. But I can see it working with shorter works, too.