Read Under the Stars With #SummerReading & @Scholastic

This year’s Summer Reading theme is Reading Under the Stars, and is powered by EVEREADY®, the maker of batteries and flashlights, to encourage families to discover new and fun ways to explore reading outside this summer.

Now in its 8th year, the Summer Reading Challenge program is dedicated to stopping the “Summer Slide” and getting kids to read throughout the summer months when school is out.

Starting May 5, 2014, kids can log their reading minutes (online and on smartphones) as they Read for the World Record, enter sweepstakes to win fabulous prizes, and earn digital rewards when they complete weekly reading challenges.

This year’s Summer Reading Challenge theme is “Reading Under the Stars” (powered by EVEREADY®). Throughout the summer, kids will read around the galaxy and unlock star constellations as they log reading minutes.

In 2013, Scholastic inspired more than 130,000 kids from 4,200 schools in all 50 States and 31 countries to set a new record for summer reading of 176 million-plus minutes!

Our Experience In Having a Reading Under the Stars Party!

For my wife and I, it is so important for kids to catch the reading bug! Both my wife and I have always been BIG readers and with my wife being a past teacher and a current librarian, our kids were definitely going to be raised around books. My kids grew up being read to, and they now are moving quickly into independent reading.

Over the past year my oldest daughter last year in third year continues to read well, but her teacher kept telling us that her goal for Diva-J was to get her to a point where she truly loved reading, and she wanted to read, just for the love of reading. Over the year we never really saw much movement toward this goal, but as we moved into the summer we challenged her to get back into reading and set a goal for herself. Well….her goal was to read The Series of Unfortunate Events Books this summer. This was a BIG goal as there were 13 books, but we encouraged her and I think getting actively involved in things like the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge as well as another similar reading club through our local library helped with this goal.

I was amazed though, she started getting into the books and started sailing through them. When I say sailing through them, I mean like reading more than one of the books in a day and reading for hours at a time. She became animated and excited about reading and let me tell you, nothing makes me feel better than to see this excitement.

We partnered her excitement with a fun night reading under the stars. Thanks to the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge as well as some great Eveready Flashlights that were sent for our party, we got the tent out, invited over a few of the girls’ friends and had a reading party. This was a fun event, with popcorn, drinks and lots of books. While it was not too dark, at least at first seeing that the sun does not go down until after 9PM, we still had a ton of fun and we read a lot together.

I am really interested in seeing where this passion for books will lead my daughter. I am hoping that she will find another book series after this that she will want to read next… so for now we are keeping our eyes open!

I encourage all of you to take the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge too and get your kids excited about reading and finding their own passion in the worlds that books can open for them!