Summer Reading Program

Yesterday I took the kids to the library's summer reading kick-off party and signed them all up for the summer reading program. Now, we LOVE summer reading programs in our house, and I'm sure this year will be no exception, but one thing that really bugs me every year is the reading chart. Sometimes the programs ask you to record the number of books or chapters read, which seems simple enough, except that it always annoys me that the charts don't actually have enough spaces for listing the number of required books. Often the lines for listing the books don't even correspond with how many sections of incentives there are in the program. Last year, for instance, there were four sections of lines for listing the books - but only three incentive levels. And there were something like eight lines per section, but the number of required books was 10 for the first level, 15 for the next, and 25 for the final level. This actually caused me a certain amount of discomfort and stress, as it has every time we've done similar programs. It seems no one thinks to actually provide the correct amount of lines for the books the kids are supposed to read (and I'm not even talking having enough lines for the books we actually read - even though extras would be nice!). I suppose that the kids are only supposed to list their favorities, but last year, they couldn't get their incentives unless they had the book chart in addition to the chart with the colored boxes, which I thought was insane. In the first place, am I really going to lie and let the kids color in more boxes than they actually read books for - just for an ice-cream cone? In the second place, if the charts don't give us enough room to list the books they read, how could the charts prove they read the books? Last year I wrote the book titles in every available space on the chart, but it bothered me all summer. This year the kids have to color boxes for every fifteen minutes of reading time, which is better, but still imprecise. I'm going to have to estimate, because I'm not going to sit down with a timer every time we read - unlike some people I know. :-) When we brought home the charts, Aimee began asking HOW she was going to read in fifteen -minute increments so that she could accurately record her time. She pondered this all afternoon, and really did begin recording her start and stop times. But wait - it was going to confuse her if she read, say, twenty minutes in one sitting, because that was one bug (on the coloring chart), plus five minutes toward the next one. When I finally explained to her that she reads WAY more than the number of hours on the chart, and she was going to fill it up with no problem at all, she was distressed about the fact that there weren't going to be enough bugs on the chart to color. Would she get the incentives if it was all filled up at once? It was almost 10 last night when I suggested that she just plan to color in a certain number of bugs a day, to represent her bedtime reading time, and just consider that a sample of her overall reading time - thus fulfilling the library's requirement, and at the same time settling her own mind by creating a "rule" to define the recorded reading time in the context of the whole.

So it's settled, and this year we both feel a little better about the summer reading program :-)