My girls love re-reading their favourite books, so this year we introduced a competition to try to shift them towards some new reading.
For the 8 year old, that’s the Wings of Fire series; for the 5 yo, that’s Dragonmasters. Yes, we are in a serious dragons phase, and yes, it is far superior to the preceding unicorns phase. Both series have lots of entries, 20+, and the girls are more than happy to jump back and forth in the timeline over and over again.
Generally speaking, I’m not complaining. I’m just delighted they are reading, and enjoying it. But we have lots of great books on the bookshelf that aren’t getting read - and even when we go to the library and they pick new stuff themselves, those books are lower on the preference stack than the tried and true favourites.
Sort of off the cuff, a few weeks ago I introduced a “December New Books” competition. We printed a table on the page with 25 slots, and told them they could fill each slot with any book they hadn’t read before. If they got to 15, they’d get a prize; for 25, an even bigger prize. And they are doing amazingly well! Maybe my kids are more responsive to incentives / competitions like this than others… but I was surprised how excited they are about adding their books to the sheet.
Now I have to think seriously about the prize.
