Super Readers

The Manhattan library has a summer reading program that runs from June 1st to July 26th to encourage kids to read over the summer, and kids can earn prizes once they have reached 250, 500, and 1,000 minutes. As of last night, Daniel has reached the 500 minute mark (he can count minutes where someone is reading to him) and Annika has passed 1,000 minutes! Will took Daniel by the library this afternoon to claim his prizes, and Daniel was able to choose the book Dinosaur Roar! to help satisfy his ever-growing love of dinosaurs. Annika has declared that she wants to stay at camp longer so that she can draw more, so we will need to take her another time to pick up her next prizes. ;)

One thing that is a little different to me is that summer reading is by time (minutes) instead of a number of books. I volunteered for four summers in a row in the children's department at our local library when I was a teenager and it never even  occurred to anyone to run the program using anything other than books. Obviously, there are lots of ways to game that system and time is probably a better metric, but I am horrible at keeping track of time and probably underestimate the time that we spend reading since I don't naturally time the activity. So thankful that both kids love books and love reading! Daniel last night declared that it was the best night of his childhood because "we got to read lots of books."

The other big "academic" activity we are doing this summer is 20 minutes of math every day as soon as the kids get home from camp. We have never done this before because I like the idea of summer being a time to relax, but have decided that 20 minutes a day still gives more than 23.5 remaining hours to relax. ;) Annika has been working on a website that the district uses during the school year so that she can stay integrated with what they are doing in school. Clearly anything Annika does IS AWESOME in Daniel's eyes and it is SO UNFAIR if he cannot do it also. To appease Daniel, we bought him a "Summer Before Kindergarten" workbook and he LOVES it. We usually have to pry it away from him when math time is up - "Daniel, stop working on math! Don't you want to go to the pool with the rest of the family?!" Needless to say, I am a little shocked by his interest but I will definitely take it!