I would think that if you asked a teacher to name one of the hardest parts of their job, one of the things that would top the list would be how to keep kids motivated. Fortunately for Evan's teachers, it doesn't take much to get him excited about something. He came home from school yesterday with a new reading program called "Paws for Reading". The premise of it is that you pick a side to read for - dogs or cats - and then you keep track of the minutes you read on a website that you log into. The website tallies the total minutes read for each team and even breaks it down to your specific class. One cool bonus about the whole deal is for every twenty minutes you read and log on to record it, Scholastic will donate a book to charity.
Yesterday was early release day at school. Spencer went home with a friend and Hailey and I were working on her homework so it was pretty quiet in the house. Evan decided he was going to start his reading. A little while later, this is how I found him.
He dragged the couch pillows to the dining room table and laid there and read, surrounded by his piles of books. I wouldn't think it would be that comfortable, but whatever works.
I took this shot of the website before he was finished logging his minutes for the day. He read one hundred and twenty minutes yesterday. Putting the cats in the lead for his class! The site keeps you interested by unlocking special badges for certain minute amounts. Yesterday he earned his first badge (a collar) and a special print out of a bookmark that he could use to log additional minutes with. I haven't seen him so excited about anything in a long time. He kept on telling me that the cats were going to CRUSH the dogs! Needless to say I am very impressed by this reading program. It obviously works wonders for Evan.
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