Homeschooling, ready or not, here we come, here we are, here we go, etc. The following is an idea to help motivate those who don’t love to read and reward any who do.

One thing we try to teach our kids is that what you focus on, grows.

An area our kids needed to “grow” in was reading.

I read online about a teacher found herself with an abundance of tiny stuffed animals – like the kind that might come in a kid’s meal at a restaurant, for example.

She assigned one to each of her students and their job was to “care” for the animal by reading to it for 20 minutes a day.

Using this as a starting point I decided to do “reading eggs”

We put hot glue on large Easter eggs so that they looked like they had scales and then the girls each painted their own.

Our rules are:

1. Read aloud to your egg 15 minutes a day. (We started with 20 but after a few months were able to decrease the time.)

2. Read aloud to your egg 15 minutes a day for 21 days out of the month and earn a prize (this was phrased as “see what hatches” though the egg did not actually hatch.)

3. Read aloud to your egg 15 minutes a day EVERY day of the month and earn a second prize.

We hang a calendar for each resident at the beginning of the month, and use tiny round stickers (they are colored, you can get a for your money from Amazon) for them to put on for each day they read.

The first month I made sure the prizes were AMAZING so that they would be motivated to continue. One of our girls loves a specific cartoon character so I got her a large LED nightlight of that character. Another loves Harry Potter so I bought her a mug with the crest of the “house” she considers herself to be a part of.

After that prizes have become things we pick up here and there and I let them choose out of what we have. Second prizes are less expensive and during months when they already are receiving gifts (birthday or Christmas for example) we gave coupons – which would work for any of the prizes really. Ours are usually for a free “kids box” next time we go to the movies (for our movies this includes a small popcorn, drink and package of candy) but could, of course, be anything you choose. Quarantine coupons require(s) some extra creativity! You can also ask what things they might like the coupons to be for.

Let us know if this idea works for your family, or if it inspires you to come up with a reading “program” of your own!