When you celebrate your child’s reading achievements and progress, you can keep them motivated and engaged and boost their confidence. Your acknowledgment of their milestones and successes really matters, whether they are starting at a preschool reading level or continuing their reading journey.
Here are seven creative ways to celebrate your child’s reading achievements and help foster a love of reading that will last a lifetime.
1. Reading Passport
Reading is an excellent adventure for your children. They can explore the Amazon Rainforest, travel through time, or blast into space. They can go anywhere their imagination can take them through the pages of their book. Surely all that travel deserves a stamp in their passport.
A reading passport is a great way to keep your child engaged in their reading and encourage them to keep on traveling. You could assemble the passport as a craft activity, repurpose a small notebook, or download a template online.
Each book they finish gets them a “stamp.” As their passport fills up, your child has a visual record of their reading journey.
2. Reading Challenges
Setting a reading challenge is a fantastic way to engage more competitive children. You could create small challenges each month or launch one big challenge at the start of the school year. The target could be to read a book in a new genre or to tackle a more challenging novel.
Whatever the goal, check in with your child regularly to see if they need reading support, and celebrate when they complete their challenge. When children successfully complete their reading challenge, they get a sense of pride in their reading skills that keeps them motivated to achieve more.
3. Sticker Charts
Sticker charts are an excellent way to keep children on track with reading because they give immediate visual feedback and reinforce positive choices. You may have used sticker charts in your home for tracking chores or potty training, and buying refills of stickers is cheap.
Stickers are great for acknowledging reading progress at any level suitable for your child, from reading for 10 minutes daily to completing full-length novels.
When your child has filled out their sticker chart, you can give them a small reward. Rewards don’t have to cost money; they could be as simple as sharing a hot cocoa together or holding a family movie night. (They get to pick the movie.)
4. Certificates
Certificates are used in schools and youth groups to praise and reward achievements, and you could also use them at home to motivate your child to boost their reading fluency and comprehension.
You can buy reading achievement certificates from stores, or you can create your own, print them on cardstock at home, and present them to your child for hitting reading milestones such as completing a book series.
A certificate is simple, but it instills a sense of pride in a job well done and motivates kids to reach for another book.
5. Reading Wall of Fame
Do you have a bulletin board or whiteboard in your home? If you do, consider using part of it to create a reading wall of fame. You could post a picture of the cover from your child’s latest read and ask them to give it a star rating. If you have more space available, you could create a leaderboard rating all of the books your child has read so far this school year.
This visual display publicly acknowledges and celebrates your child’s reading triumphs. The wall of fame displayed in a prominent place in your home shows that you value literacy as well as your child’s progress.
6. Crowd Sourcing
It’s one thing to know that your parents are proud of you and quite another to know that others are rooting for you, too.
Share your child’s reading success with grandparents, aunts or uncles, older cousins or siblings, their sporting coach, or their youth pastor. When others respond by greeting your child with, “I hear you read a whole novel last week,” or “Great job on reading every day last week,” they’ll get extra validation for a job well done.
When you bring others into your child’s reading journey, they can share encouragement or book recommendations. As loved ones bond with your child over reading experiences, they can strengthen relationships and create lasting memories.
7. Surprise Rewards
Surprises are a great motivator for keeping your children reading. You can use surprise rewards in tandem with other reward systems or alone.
A great way to do this is to agree on the rewards and write them down on paper. Rewards could include a new book, extra reading time, a small candy bar, etc. Fold the papers up and store them in a special jar. For each agreed-upon reading milestone, your child gets to pick a slip of paper out of the surprise jar.
This system ensures that children will like anything they pick but still maintain an element of surprise.
Reading Rewards Keep Children on Track
Reward systems can be low-cost and convenient, but they go a long way in helping kids learn to read and become lifelong lovers of reading.