Book It! Homeschool

I wrote this blog post about my desire to inspire the boys to read more a couple months ago now. My resolution to keep a list of books read and purged from our shelves fizzled out shortly, but we have made progress regardless making room for better-loved books. And we've discovered some great books among our collection in the process! Many of the books we parted with were well-worn board books that had seen better days. Ian exercised his love of purging by throwing several books in the trash last week. However, I only discovered this while digging through the already-taken-out trash in search of a missing shoe. Those books were, by then, beyond recovering. Ew. The shoe was discovered later stuffed down the bathroom heat vent.

A friend recently shared a link to Pizza Hut's Book It! reading program. (Click for the link to the Homeschool Enrollment form.) It's designed for students grades K-6. After filling out and submitting the form you'll be mailed a packet of information including links for free and discounted e-books and a packet of coupons for free personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut. I set the daily reading goals for Aidan and Gavin, and if they reach them we get to take a trip to Pizza Hut. Let me tell you, the incentive to get their own personal pan pizzas has worked wonders to get these guys to pick up a book!

When I think back to what fueled my joy of reading, it was first the praise I received in school for reading well after my teachers thought I was a poor reader. In kindergarten I was sat next to slow readers to help them read the words I already knew well. By 1st grade I had become so incredibly shy that I was terrified to read in front of my classmates. I was put in a delayed reading program so I could "catch up". As I became familiar with the small group my timidness melted away and I was shortly after put back in the regular class. By 3rd grade I was in an accelerated spelling class.

My Mom was instrumental in engendering a love of stories for me. Some of my earliest memories are of my brothers and I piling into Mom and Dad's bed at night while Dad was gone working so that Mom could read to us from the Tarzan book. When it turned bitterly cold, lacing the upstairs windows with frost and ice and freezing bedside bottles of water solid, we would camp out in the warmth of the living room for the night. It was then that Mom would tell us stories of Oscar the adventurous mouse, a character she had developed just for us. Oftentimes poor Mom would be dozing off while we continued listening with rapt amusement as Oscar morphed into a turtle who just wanted to find a horn to play in the school parade, or some other such nonsense. As she would trail off one of us would nudge her or whiper "Mom!" to prolong the tale. What relentlessness...and what vultures we were!

My real love of reading began around the age of  9 or 10 when the neighbors loaned me their old "Baby-Sitters Club" books. The characters became my friends, and I begged Mom for more books. Reading became mine. We began frequenting the library where I was able to feed my newly found obsession. I had devoured the whole series (at least what had been so far published then) by the time my Mom happened to pick up a book, and discovered the characters had boyfriends and crushes and all manner of things I probably should not have been filling my head with at such a young age. I moved on to the "Adventures of the Northwoods" series by Lois Walfrid Johnson, and then to "An American Adventure" series by Lee Roddy. I was hooked. The best was when I found a series I enjoyed; the longer the better. It was a hard blow when stories ended. I'd mope around the house for a couple days in apathy, the thought of ripping myself from the world of one story to begin another felt like betrayal. I began writing to authors, gleaning addresses from the fine print of the copyright page at front of books. I started a collection of the letters I received in return from authors.

This passion and enjoyment of reading is what I hope to pass on to my boys. (Not the apathetic book hangover phase, of course.) I tried illustrating a point for them one day by saying each book holds an adventure, a trip to unknown lands by simply turning a page, without stepping a foot out of the house. I even made them sniff an old book. Oh yes I did. Books smell exciting. They are still their father's children though. Occasionally when they see I'm reading they'll ask how my book is. Before I can answer they'll quip, "Let me guess, it smells like adventure!" and walk away giggling. It'll get you, my pretties! Just you wait.

How do you inspire a love for reading in your children? What inspired you to read?