Great Way to Encourage Kids to Read

Yesterday a great thing happened. My kids and I write a schedule every morning now that the summer is here to help them plan out what they want to do for the day. Included are meals, snack times, tv time, video game time, reading time, outside play time, playroom time, clean up time, etc. This way the days aren't wasted with TV and video games. When reading time was up yesterday and it was finally TV/Video time, my oldest son decided to keep on reading!! And it is all thanks to a wonderful website called www.bookadventure.org.

It works similar to the school program called Accelerated Reader. Children read books and take a quiz testing their comprehension. Even my Kindergartener did the quizzes - and scored a 100 every time! They earn so many points depending on the difficulty of the book chosen and their score on the quiz. A few companies have even donated some prizes (small things, mind you) for children once they reach so many points. A great feature for parents is that you can monitor their progress and make your own certificates for them to access once they reach a certain score. I HIGHLY recommend this site as a mom and a teacher.

You can search for books on your child's reading level, say first grade, and then print out a list to take to the library (or to your own child's bedroom library). I took out about one shelf of books from my kids' bookcase and several of their books were on the site. Kids love it because they earn the points, and parents & teachers love it because it gets kids reading for comprehension!

Check it out and tell me what you think!