At school, the girls are part of a reading program. It's one that I don't mind so much. It involves a reading log that keeps track of books read, time spent, and then signed by mom or dad. My children love to read - never have (as yet) had a problem with that. Each grade has a different "bench mark" to reach each month. Kindergarten is 6 hours each month, 2nd grade is 10 hours each month. As you can see, it goes up by 2 hours each grade.
The problem in the beginning for my children is that they've always read and never had to worry about recording time. So, often we'd find a girl reading and discover that they hadn't looked at the clock before starting and had no idea how long they were reading. Beth still struggles with this - though if we hear or see her starting to get into reading mode, we try to remind her to grab a clock and her reading log. Gabi has less problems with it - in part, I believe, because it's a personally assigned (by herself) challenge for her to meet (and well exceed) the goals. There are times, though, that I still find I'm reminding even her.
Well - a bench mark can be made for the month, or one can earn more than one in the month. Each bench mark takes the child's marking pin to a new location on the world map. Each month, as part of the experience, the children learn about a new place in the world.
Today, I signed the reading log which will bring Gabi completely around the world... yes, she's officially met every bench mark for the whole year! I'm not hugely surprised, but apparently this was her goal for herself all along! I mentioned to her that I thought her continuing to keep track of her reading would count toward the entire schools reading goal - now she has another reason to keep track of it all.
(The best part, she's reading and rereading books all around her - becoming less picky about what she reads. And, Bob and I've begun a list of "classics" we think she'll enjoy that we can look for at the library. She's thrilled!)
***As a side note, Jeremy is beginning to read the Magic Tree House series. He's not reading well enough to do it on his own yet, but he loves these stories and can read most of the words in them so far. Peter sits near and listens, so it's a great way to encourage Jeremy's reading fluency and decoding while spending some great time in the world of imagination with both boys.***
That is awesome! Hunter is still reading 4th-5th grade books. Rachel is struggling a bit more but enjoying to learn how to read. Tell Gabbi we said congrats! Have fun reading!!
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