Summer is upon us, and while we love the beach, we can’t spend every day for hours out in the sun. Which means the “I’m Bored” starts up sooner than I care to admit. This summer, to keep our kids in tip top shape and let them escape to unknown worlds, we decided reading would be a part of their summer fun. So, you can imagine my excitement when Scholastic asked me to join in their Summer Reading Challenge!
This post is part of a sponsored program with Scholastic, but I am a mom who loves to read and encourage that in my kids. All that means is opinions and thoughts are my own.
What is the Summer Reading Challenge? The Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge is a free online/mobile reading program that helps prepare kids for back-to-school by encouraging them to read every day all summer long. This year’s Summer Reading Challenge theme is “Reading Under the Stars” (powered by EVEREADY®), to encourage kids to go outside and open their world to reading. Next month, you’ll be hearing all about our night of reading under the stars. To get started you simply visit the website, and create a username, which will not be personally identifiable. They get to choose from places, animals, colors, and quite a few others, to get the name they want!
Even though we won’t be camping out until next month, we have already gotten started on our summer reading! Seen above is last weeks reading log for my daughter. As you can tell, she is a lot like me and could spend all day in a book. There is just something about escaping into a world that isn’t ours that draws us both in. Each week kids get a reading minute challenge to try to meet (or beat). They can get badges, prizes, and the satisfaction of meeting (or beating) the minutes…which is awesome for competitive kids like mine.
With the reading program, kids can link to their schools (with parents permission). Their minutes then get added to the school total. They can see their school rank and how many total minutes have been logged. Another great thing is this program allows teachers to sign up, to earn free books for their classroom. A teacher can never have enough books! In 2013, more than 130,000 kids from 4,200 schools , in all 50 states and 31 countries, set the bar high at 176 million+ minutes. They would love to beat that this year! of course, as of earlier this morning we were getting close….
There are a few ways to have fun through the week:
- 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 Summer Reading Challenge for a new collage of summer books.
- Download the Reading Timer App. The Scholastic Reading Timer app 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.
When they’ve finished their reading for the day, let them relax and have fun with some of the games, find new books to add to their collection and so much more. We are excited to take part in the Summer Reading Challenge and we hope you will join us. Head over and sign up today!
Keep up with the Summer Reading Challenge socially!
- Like Scholastic Parents on Facebook
- Follow Scholastic on Twitter and Instagram
- Follow the Summer Reading Challenge Pinterest Board
- Like the Summer Reading Challenge YouTube Playlist
Toni Patton
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That is awesome. My kids get assigned summer reading & a report from school.
I can only spend about 10 minutes in the sun before I start to burn. My Hubs is Italian and can spend the day sunbathing if he wants to. I love finding a nice shade tree and reading under it.
Oh I like this! Reading and fun! I like how they can enter their time on an app vs paper which would get lost. Then I like the idea of games. Love the Scholastic company!
We love Scholastic and how they help kids keep reading. Lots of great tools to use this summer. The app is amazing and really helpful.
My daughter always signs up for her school summer reading program. Its always a good thing to keep up reading!
We usually participate in a summer reading program through our local library. But we just moved; and I haven’t found the new library yet. So Thankyou! I am in need of a summer reading program for my kids!
We do reading challenges every summer, well the kids that is. This year I found a reading challenge for adults and I cannot wait to join!
It’s always good to keep those kids reading so they don’t regres.
What a fun and creative way to get kids to read during the summer.
Awesome challenge! Hope your kiddos keep reading!
This is a great program to encourage more reading over summer. Our library does a summer reading program that my girls participate in every year. I fully support any program that gets kids reading!
It’s so important for kids to maintain their reading stamina throughout the summer. This is a great program for promoting that.
What a fun program and app! I love reading but I have been so lazy about it lately. I need to get back on track.
Our local library has a great reading programs for kids. However, I am happy to read about this review, I will download this app for my girls.
What a great app – I love reader, always have since I was a child – would have been interesting to see how much I did used to read. x
That’s really neat that Scholastic is posting progress publicly! This is a fun program.