Kids don’t want to read during the summer, or do they? I don’t know, my kids changed their tune a little thanks to The Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge™. You might remember my post last month about summer reading, where I provided 10 tips to get your child reading this summer and introduced The Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge™. I am very proud of my girls, especially Vayda she is doing great on the challenge so far, and her reading under the stars party was a huge hit.
My first post provides details on the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge, but I’ll share a litlte summary with you here.
Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge
The 2014 Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge™ has been super exciting for my kids. An exciting free, online reading program helps to motivate children to read during the summer months, while they are out of school. It’s on its 8th year, and the program challenges kids 5 to 14 to log their reading minutes, so they can earn awesome rewards, but they are also trying to help make a new world record for summer reading.
The registration process is rather easy. Parents and teachers are able to register children in grades K – 9 by visiting the Scholastic website. Once the children are registered, they can go in any time before September 5th 2014 and log their summer reading minutes.
Did you know that last year Scholastic inspired over 130,000 kids from 4,200 different schools in over 31 countries to set a new world record for summer reading? WOW, that’s a lot of reading – 176 million minutes to be exact! It’s going to be hard to beat that this year, but I have some good news so far this summer kids in the summer reading challenge have read 200,983,373 minutes (it’s probably gone up too)! I know Vayda is even more motivated to keep reading, because she wants to see how big that number can go. Remember if your child isn’t part of the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge™ it’s not to late to visit the Scholastic website.
6 Reasons Kids Should Join The Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge
I can think of plenty of reasons kids should take part in the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge™, and after watching how much it’s helped Vayda I would recommend it to anyone with kids. Here are a few reasons every kids should join the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge™ (remember, it’s not too late either).
The Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge™ is free and online
The Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge™ is totally free, you never have to leave your home, but if you need to it’s also mobile. So kids can track their summer reading everyday, from wherever you are.
It’s a fun program for kids
This years theme was “Reading Under the Stars” (powered by Eveready), and it helped to encourage my children to go outside and read. There was a few nights I went outside with Vayda, and listened to her read, because after joining the reading program reading under the stars sounded relaxing.
The summer reading program is engaging
Kids read, and log their minutes online and on smartphones as they read to bread the world record. Vayda was excited that she had the chance to be part of something so cool, and she wanted to help break the world record. Kids can also enter sweepstakes to win cool prizes, earn digital rewards when they complete weekly reading challenges, and be part of something.
build a relationship
Vayda loved that Shawn and I would sit outside with her and listen to her read. Vayda has always been the one who wanted attention, and I think she finally realized all she had to do was ask. Rather than fighting and arguing with her sister, all she had to do was ask. Vayda reads to Mattie and Jess now, and has even asked me to read their bedtime stories to them, which is great. I want my children to be close, and love one another.
Helps them have more confidence
Shawna and I both noticed how much Vayda’s reading improved, and how much more confident she sounded when she read. Of course, we tell her what a great job she is doing, which makes her feel good and want to work harder. When she left school last year, she didn’t want to read because she didn’t think she was good at it. If you were to ask her about reading now, I know she would tell you how much she enjoys it.
Learn to use their imagination
I watched Vayda learn why reading is so cool. I had never thought about that before, but I think some kids, like Vayda might not understand why we read stories, or how to read and use their imagination. Vayda told me that she watched the book like a movie, but in her head now. She does not just read to hear herself anymore, she reads because she enjoys it, and because she figured out how to use her imagination while she reads. I think her being part of this program, and reading books she was interested in helped her learn how to use her imagination while she reads, which makes reading much more engaging.
This year the summer reading challenge theme is Reading Under the Stars, and it is powered by EVEREADY. Kids from around the world will read under the galaxy and log their minutes online. As they log their minutes online, constellations will light up and unlock fun facts. Kids can earn virtual prizes when they complete reading quizzes, complex text challenges, word challenges, etc.
Vayda had been planning her Reading Under The Stars Party for a while now, and poor thing she tried to have everything read the day before, when along came the wind and blew everything away. She has set up our tent, along with everything else she could think of. Rather than chancing everything beling blow away again, she decided to play it safe, and have the Summer Reading Under the Stars Party on the trampoline, which I agreed was a great idea.
Vayda was thrilled to have new books she was send for her Reading Under the Stars Party.
Little Mattie even received a few boosk, which if you ask her she can totally read, but not to you, lol.
We also received plenty of EVEREADY flashlights and batteries so the kids could read well into the night if they wanted. Scholastic also sent us a blanket, posters, handouts, books, and more. We had everything we needed for the kids to enjoy a night of reading under the stars, and they did just that.
The kids spent time outside on the trampoline reading to one another. Mattie did a great job winging it, she just rolled with things, and made of the word as she went, until Corbin called her on her story, lol. The two rambled on, and one, which eventually led to Mattie telling Corbin to be quite and leave her alone. Corbin apologized for something, I don’t know if he was really sure what, but I giggled to myself because it starts so young, lol.
The kids has a blast reading outside, and ended up pairing up with the kids closest to their age. The gathering was a huge success, and Vayda had a blast, along with everone else.
Oh, and before I forget be sure to check out the Scholastic Reading Timer app! It encourages reading every day and most importantly, makes it fun! The app allows users to time reading minutes with an interactive stopwatch and track minutes on a weekly log. Plus, parents can check children’s reading activity in addition to browsing daily tips, articles and book lists.
They have a few fun weekly events too:
- Every Monday, check Scholastic on Twitter for the #MondayMinutes. See the total number of minutes kids have read to date!
- Every Friday, follow the Scholastic Facebook calendar for Friday Freebies!
- Every Friday, check out the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge™ for a new collage of summer books.
To learn more about Scholastic you can visit them at Scholastic.com, connect with Scholastic on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube.
