Week 22: Summer Reading List

Our local library has a wonderful summer reading program and my kids have participated for many years. It’s great motivation to get the kids to keep reading over the summer.

Now that they’re older, though, (9 and 12) the library’s summer reading program and its prizes aren’t as motivational. I also have one kid who reads a ton, but he tends to re-read the same books over and over.  Our copies of Calvin & Hobbes and Big Nate are all falling apart from the re-reading.

So this year, I’m going to try something new with my kids.  Instead of focusing on how much they’re reading, I’m going to focus on expanding their horizons.  I used The Trip Clip’s Custom List feature to create this list of book genres that I want my kids to read this summer:

My hope is that by working through this list we will learn a little about how to find good books to read that are outside of their comfort zone, and they will get exposed to some different books and expand their horizons a bit.

Of course, you can always create a more standard summer reading tracker with The Trip Clip Custom List. This one gives your child a chance to write down the name of each book they read. You can decide how many empty slots to include on their list.

I wanted to get more ideas for summer reading lists, and I found this fun blog post from The Measured Mom.  She remembers her mom challenging her to read 100 books each summer.  But she had an idea for a twist on this, and challenged her kids to read in 100 different places!  I didn’t include a full 100 on the list below, but I did have fun making a list of places for my kids to read that I thought might amuse them:

Some kids will find this unusual kind of list a fun twist that will get them reading. You can have a lot of fun thinking up silly places for them to read and see if it inspires them!