So much of my childhood was spent reading, and I have zero regrets about it. In fact, not much has changed. 🙂 It’s not uncommon to see me with headphones on listening to a book while I cook, fold laundry, prep school, garden or go for a walk. Also not uncommon to see me curled up with a physical book in hand reading on a rainy day or just about any night before bed. Although my passion for reading is abundant, most of our kids don’t have such a love…not yet anyway! I’m always looking for new ways to encourage them to read and majority of the time once they get started they get in the habit for quite awhile! WIN!
One way, we get them to read more is by playing Reading Bingo. This works great for the younger kids and the prizes for each time they get a line can be quite simple. Just below the pic you can download the Bingo to print!
Once they have a line complete you can have a “goodie basket” they get to choose a small prize from. Sometimes we just go straight for blackout and once it’s done we’ll go do something fun together like grab a slushie at the gas station or they get to choose dessert for Sunday and help me make it if they want to.
Our goals have become more ambitious as the kids get older due to there being such a wide range of ages. So we introduced our reading banner! We made a goal last summer to make the banner reach across our longest wall in the dining room, which also happens to be where we do home school, but turns out that was way to easy so we upped it this year. We started at the beginning of the summer and there is no deadline this time, but when we hit 50 books read we’ll go out as a family to get ice cream. When we hit 100 books, we’ll do a family trip to Fat Cats for an afternoon of family fun.
We quickly realized it would be way too easy for me to carry the family on this challenge so we switched it to everyone has to have at least 5 books up there by the time we hit 50 for it to count and then another 5 by the time we hit 100. Only chapter books count and they are allowed to count their larger books they read for school as well as their free time books. We’re 4 months in and almost to 50. Woot woot!
I printed them on color paper to make it easier for me. Sometimes we embellish the colored prints and sometimes we full on color/design the white ones and other times we keep it super simple. I keep a large stack printed, cut, and ready to be hung within easy reach of everyone so we can immediately fill one out when we’ve finished a book.
You can check out the printable banner below. You’ll see there a couple fun filler banner pieces to throw on the banner but they don’t count to our total of course.
All in all, we’re happy with our reading banner and the encouragement it’s giving us to keep reading. I love that we keep it in our dining room so we can regularly talk about the books we’ve read as we eat dinner and are reminded of the new pieces we added to the banner. Whatever it takes to continue to instill a love of book in our kids, right?! Happy reading!
xo,
Jenny
Homestead Creations 
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