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Thursday, December 31, 2015
Happy New Reading Year!
It's that time again! We reflect on all the books we read in 2015 and look ahead to what we can read in 2016! Hopefully you did read something this year. I know my read list was pretty short, even if my page count was high, thanks to George RR Martin. It's also a time to set new reading challenges, in which case I could use your help.
For myself, I'll be doing another reading challenge with my brother, only it looks like the Baron will be setting the rules to even the playing field- audiobooks have previously helped me where graphic novels have helped my brother. But what I really need help with is my daughter.
Lovely will be eight in February and has been reading novels above her grade level for a little over a year now. She's part way into the Harry Potter books and devours Roald Dahl. I'd like to set up a fun reading challenge for her to see how many novels she can get through this year, only I'm having a hard time deciding on incentives. You know, for every three to five books she reads, she gets X (no idea what X is yet). Or she'll receive a different thing for each level- after five books we'll take her out to eat, after ten books we'll take her to the movies, after fifteen books... See? I'm having a hard time deciding. She's a complete nerd (like her parents) and a bookworm (also like her parents) and she's motivated when it comes to reading.
So, any ideas here? I'm sort of running out of time to figure this out with it being New Year's Eve and all.
Speaking of which, I wish you all the best in 2016 in your reading (or writing) ventures!
Hrm. When I was a kid there was a thing where every 100 (I think?) books you read you got a free Pizza Hut pizza. If food's the kind of thing she's into, you could probably cover a couple of levels by going, "Okay, read ten books and you get a small fries from McDonald's, read 20 books and we'll go back and get a shake and a fry, and read thirty and we'll go back and get a whole Happy Meal...then we'll start thinking about Olive Garden." Or whatever. The other thing that springs to mind is if there's something high-end that you fully intend to buy her at some point this year anyway (like an iPad or a bike or something), make it the crazy, end-of-year 500 books read or whatever prize.
ReplyDeleteI like Steve's suggestion.
ReplyDeleteSo, it's Jan 2, I'm sure you've got this all figured out. What did you decide?? If you didn't get it figured out, when my son was younger, I used books as incentives for him to read his existing books. E.g., if he read 5 books, we could go to the bookstore and he could choose one book. If he read 10 books, we could go and he could choose 2, etc. We go to the library or second hand shops for books, so going to the actual bookstore was a big treat for him.
ReplyDeleteI'm late reading since I was gone over New Year's but I like both suggestions from Stephen and Brenda. My daughter also loves to read, and she has a huge TBR pile of books. She loves the book fair at the school every year and can't wait to go shop for books. I usually tell her that she has to work though some of her existing books before she can get more, and that works - but I think this year we should do a more structured challenge with her. Let us know what you come up with!
ReplyDeleteI like the ideas here! Food is tough because of sensitivities :/ But we ended up at Barnes & Noble back in November and she was going out of her mind with all the choices. Perhaps that would work! I also like the idea of a big ticket item if she finishes so many books. I'll be sitting down tomorrow and writing up the plan. Thanks so much!
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