Spring Reading Incentive Chart

When the weather turns nice and warm in springtime, my boys like to spend all of their time playing outside, and quiet reading sessions often get neglected and forgotten about until bedtime (when my oldest is “too tired” to read to himself). I wanted to come up with a fun way to motivate the boys to read more, so together we made this fun spring reading incentive chart using some of our favorite Elmer’s Board Mate products.

These are just a few of the new Board Mate accessories that you can pick up at Target, Michael’s, Hobby Lobby and Meijer. My three-year-old is completely obsessed with letters and numbers, so he’s been having a blast using the re-positionable letters to form words on the bulletin board and using the stencils to label everything he can get his hands on! For our reading chart project we used the Board Mate Dual Tip Glue Pen, Board Mate Bright Letter & Number Stickers, Board Mate Assorted Sticker Shapes, Board Mate Permanent Markers, and Board Mate Glitter Shakers.

We used a long metal ruler and traced a 21″ long outline to serve as the flower’s stem and become the graph of how many books the boys have read. We marked off every 1/2″ from the top of the stem until we had reached 40 marks (Note: a 21″ line will leave you with a little bit of extra space at the bottom of the stem to fill in after the kids read their first book. It’s not necessary to leave any extra, but I just thought it looked nice!).

We drew leaves on the stems to mark every 10 books, and we topped the stems off with a couple of coffee filter flowers. We are going to come up with some incentive prizes for the kids to earn when they reach each 10 book milestone (going out for frozen yogurt, having a family movie night, etc.), and the prizes will be written on each leaf.

We used the letter stickers to make a title for the board then the boys each claimed a flower and used the stickers to add their names and some colorful stars. They also used small colored dot stickers to further designate the 10-20-30 book levels. A zig-zag of glittery grass finished off the chart, and they are super happy with the way it turned out! Since there are some fun incentive prizes to be earned (and I wanted to add in some school work!), the boys must fill out a book log sheet (DOWNLOAD HERE) for each book that they’ve read, and record it on their chart. The only rules are that the books must be age appropriate and challenging, and they can only use each book once. Chapter books with over 100 pages will count as one book per 100 pages (for example, Sawyer will get to fill in two spaces on his chart when he completes the 179 page book that he’s currently reading).