Zoe's Super Summer of Reading

Our local library is really great, I love that a small town has a library with nice librarians and we use it A LOT! However, the only thing I don't love is their summer reading program. I have 5 kids who love books and only 2 could do the summer reading program. My 1 year old and my 3 year old (now 4 year old) weren't "old enough" to participate and my 6th grader "aged out" by completing 5th last year. Only Cian, who just finished 3rd, and Zoe, who just finished K, were eligible in our family. I went ahead and let them do it, but I also signed ALL FIVE up at neighboring library. They allowed all the kids, including the 1 year old. Did you know the American Academy of Pediatrics says it is NEVER TOO EARLY TO READ TO YOUR BABY, click here to read why!

Our local library had kids who are going into 3rd-5th count the time spent reading, but they made the kids going into K-2nd count the number of books. I also disliked this. I was really proud of Zoe. She just finished K, so we she was in the count the books group, yet she reads chapter books. She could have read super short books to try and "up her total," but she chose to read chapter books. She read her little heart out this summer and the bigger library where we were able to log her minutes read actually awarded her a prize for the most minutes read in her age group (we didn't even know they did this prize as their ending prizes have always been a random drawing of all who read). I was so proud of her, that she read for the love of reading, and so proud of the bigger library that they recognized her accomplishment and recognized her for it. 

Zoe and her prize from the big library

Here is her final total, I took a photo of it on the last day we submitted her books she read: