Prizes Galore

If your child attends Ivy League-West you may have noticed that they don't usually go home with stickers on their shirts. I'm not a sticker giver. I don't have anything against stickers per se, it's just that I prefer not to bribe children into good behaviour at school. Sometimes I do it at home, in the case of a dire emergency where I need the kids to be extra wonderfully patient and then I'll bribe them with an ice cream from 31 flavors or a stickers, whichever seems most feasible at the moment. There are moments when the kids will come across a sticker book and ask for one and I usually give it to them because there is no reason not too, since they are not a sacred reward for good behaviour. All that being said, we do love celebrations around here. We celebrate birthday's, holidays, haircuts, storms, sunshiney days in the fall...yep, pretty much anything we can think of.

A few months ago Ms. Jamie had the brilliant idea of keeping a chart of the number of books we read. I jumped all over it. We found a 100 number chart and have been diligently keeping track of the books we read. So far we've read 79 books! We decided that once we reach 100, or every time we reach 100 books read, we will have a pizza party. What I didn't tell the kids is that they will each receive a brand new book to take home. No doubt the kids love pizza, but really, the pizza is the prize for Ms. Jamie and I reading all those books.

So, we aren't giving away prizes in order to instill a love of reading. A love a reading is prevalent around here. There are books everywhere. They are a part of not just the curriculum, but of our lives. What we are doing is celebrating an accomplishment worth noting.