Look Who's Excited About Reading!

Emma Lee has been able to read for quite some time, but like all beginning readers, it is slowing going at first and takes time and practice. Despite my gentle persuasions to spend more time reading, she wasn't "in the mood" as often as I would like for her to be. I know that there's no rush since she's not even in kindergarten yet, but I really just want to instill a love for reading (on her own) in her as soon as possible. (See why I was an English teacher?) I was struggling with encouraging her to read for fun without forcing it into something she didn't enjoy and look forward to, so together we made a reading chart.

If it is the first time she has read the book, she gets to put two stickers on her chart. After that, she gets to put one more sticker on for each time she reads it again. While she was really excited about getting stickers for her chart, I also decided to add in prizes in hopes that with the extra motivation her initial excitement would continue to last (there are a lot of little squares on that chart!). I bought some dollar store prizes and put them in a special bag. When she fills up a whole row with stickers (14) she gets to choose a prize (without looking!).

Here are pictures of her getting her first prize.

High five for a great job! 

(In order to keep Kerri happy with all of this, she gets to help "be in charge" of it. She went shopping for the prizes with me and gets to keep them all a secret from Emma Lee. She also got to give Emma Lee her prize and make sure she didn't peek!) 

She has done an amazing job and is really "into" reading now. She has been carrying a book around with her everywhere and has even read our bedtime Bible story a couple of times for us!

Enjoy my little bookworm in this video!

(Can you tell I'm just a little excited that she is excited?!)

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