29 Jun It’s not too late! Join a summer reading program!

This past year has been a blur of travel, work, and figuring out what “normal” means again. Is it possible there’s no such thing anymore? It’s even trickier with kids, isn’t it? That’s especially true with kids in early grade school who have had to navigate online learning, in-person learning, and all the unknowns–and they’re only in second grade. While it may be hard for us adults to get our heads wrapped around all the changes, fortunately kids are resilient. We all know, though, that we can’t depend on resilience alone to keep kids learning and reading. And summer is always a little tricky even in the best of times to keep kids reading, which is why once again, we’re rounding up reading programs with an incentive to inspire kids of all ages.

Pack-n-Go Girls

As always, you can take your kids on a reading adventure around the world with Pack-n-Go Girls.

Once again, we’re doing our popular Pack-n-Go Girls Summer Reading Adventure. Join us for five weeks of adventure and global discovery. Sign up and you’ll receive your printable Passport to Adventure. Then, each week for five weeks we’ll send you an email with a list of book suggestions related to a Pack-n-Go Girls country: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Mexico, and Thailand. You’ll also get links to more information about the country, as well as a fun learning activity, recipe, craft, or coloring page. At the end of the week, we’ll send you the passport stamp of the featured country to put into your passport. Collect all five passport stamps and download our printable coloring and activity book for free! Make sure you tell your friends about it since it’s a fun way to discover Pack-n-Go Girls adventures.

If you haven’t discovered the audio books, you’re going to love how Kae Denino brings the characters alive. Mystery of the Ballerina Ghost, Mystery of the Secret Room, Mystery at the Christmas Market, Mystery of the Troubled Toucan, Mystery of the Min Min Lights, and Mystery of the Thief in the Night are all available and are Whispersynced to the ebook version. It’s a great way for reluctant readers to build their skills without the stress of decoding every word.

Public Library:

We love the public library! They all have a summer reading program to get kids in the library and get them reading. If you’re new to your area, here’s a great site to find the closest library to you.

Don’t forget to look for Pack-n-Go Girls books, ebooks, and audiobooks at your library. If your library hasn’t discovered Pack-n-Go yet, they’ll appreciate the nudge from you to add the series to their collection. (So will we!)

Reading is Fundamental:

As the nation’s largest children’s literacy nonprofit, Reading is Fundamental takes you on a series of summer reading field trips. It’s all here: recommended books, activities and videos, and a printable reading log, printable scrapbooks, postcards, and more. Don’t you love getting all this for free?

Pizza Hut Camp Book It!

This favorite program has been around for decades. Track and reward the reading your kids do for June, July, and August in Pizza Hut’s Book It! digital dashboard. When they meet their monthly reading goal, they’ll receive a free Personal Pan Pizza from Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut also is sharing fun activities and book recommendations each week to keep the fun going throughout the summer.

Barnes & Noble:

With Barnes & Noble’s summer reading program, kids need to read at least eight books and record them in a reading journal along with their favorite part of each book. Their reward is a free book from a predetermined list at a Barnes & Noble store. Now, I don’t know about you, but for us, that’s a deal!

Scholastic Reading Program:

Go to Scholastic Reading Program to create your account. Instead of logging reading minutes, kids will now be encouraged to track their Reading Streaks. A Reading Streak is the number of days in a row that a student checks in. If they skip a day, it starts over. The really cool thing? For every two days in a row kids track their reading streaks, Scholastic will donate six books to kids in areas with limited or no access to books. Nice!

Chuck E. Cheese:

Reading earns kids free tokens at Chuck E. Cheese every time they read. Just track progress on printable incentive sheets, and once completed and brought to Chuck E. Cheese, your kid will receive 1o tokens as a reward.

Half Price Books:

Half Price Books reading program asks kids to read fifteen minutes a day and keep a reading log. After reading 300 minutes, kids can take their log into a Half Price store and get $5.00 in credit.

Amazon:

If you have a Kindle, Amazon always has a long list of free books. You don’t need to keep a list or write a report. You only need to hit the download button. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

Whatever you do, we hope you–and your kids–have a fun summer of turning pages and discovering new worlds.