It's no secret. We have lots of books in our home.
Some are ours, but a lot we borrow from friends and local libraries.
Each year, as we progress through history in a four year cycle, I try to find a variety of children's books set in, or about the time period we are studying. This is harder for ancient history, but quite easy for our current time period (1400's/1500's to 1850).
Due to the over abundance of selections, I started a new system this year. I still read aloud several selections to the children, but the extra books get placed in a basket. Each child is encouraged to read a few extra books each week.
To further encourage them, I made a graph that records each child's progress. We have four children with four different reading and comprehension abilities. To make it fair, we set guidelines for how many books must be read for each particular child to color a box.
Our guidelines:
7th grader - read 4 picture books / color 1 box; read 1 chapter book / color 1 box
5th grader - read 2 picture books / color 1 box; read 1 chapter book / color 2 boxes
3rd grader - read 1 picture book / color 1 box; read 1 chapter book / color 4 boxes
Preschooler - listen to 1 picture book / color 1 box
Eventually, we will add some incentive prizes,
but for now, we are simply implementing the system.
What a great system! I love that you are encouraging them to read about past time periods!
ReplyDeleteI enjoy putting those extra readers in baskets too. Now, you're system sounds very interesting ; )
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea! We also live in a house filled with books both owned and borrowed from the library. I love using great literature for our history lessons. I've tried using reading logs this year but it's not worked for me. A color-in chart might do the trick.
ReplyDeleteFor rewards there's the Pizza Hut Book It program. I'm not sure if registration is still open. If you live near a Six Flags they also have a reading program for FREE tickets for kids and one adult and discounted tickets for everyone else in the family.
Reading is HUGE here! I encourage the kids to ALWAYS have a book with them. Well, maybe not always, but if we're in the van. It's amazing how much reading can get done in a few minutes here and there through out the day!
ReplyDeleteWe do Book It, but Book Adventure is also fun for incentives...and they have to take a quiz (comprehension) to get points to get a prize. (Free!)
Sounds like a great reading system. Thanks for stopping by from the NOBH and welcome to it. All the ladies who help run it are great! And as far as the 31 catalog goes, I could buy everything in it...very dangerous!!
ReplyDeleteLove that you encourage reading like this...and that you have a system...
ReplyDelete~Kara @ The Chuppies/NOBH