Tuesday, December 6, 2022

Reading Explorer


This program originated as a winter reading program, which everyone asked for but nobody participated in! I took all the "reading challenges" from that and reworked it into a year-round reading program, 500 books before middle school. I took it down during the pandemic, wanting to rework it as I updated the companion program, Read and Grow, and eventually brought it back this December.

The program is open to all independent readers; I encourage people to do it after they finish Read and Grow: 1,000 books before kindergarten (which I kind of wish I could change to reading together, but the words are on the wall...) or they can do it concurrently. There is no "completion" so readers can just keep going as long as they want.

They start by picking up a folder which has an instruction/prize sheet and a number of themed reading challenges, with book suggestions for both younger (beginning chapters and easy readers) and older (middle grade) readers. When they have read 25 books, they get a prize. They can get one Reading Explorer bag and up to 12 free books a year and an unlimited number of iron-on patches for their reading bag. I got an enthusiastic response when I restarted this and about 20 kids, half in the 5th/6th grade range and half kindergarten/1st grade took a folder.

The files and instruction sheets can be found here. You are welcome to use the files, but please remove the Christian Slade artwork, as we purchased that via iRead and it is copyright.

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