Help Your Kids Keep Track of the Books They've Read

Giving your kids a way to record, and even just visually see, all the books they've read can help them discover their reading likes and interests. And discovering that they have likes and interests when it comes to books can help them begin to really identify themselves as readers. They might realize they have a favorite author. Who knew! Or they might discover that they seem to have a thing for historical fiction or can lead them to discover what historical fiction is (or other genres for that matter)!

I have made a bookshelf for my little guy, and he has sat in on a discussion I had with my older kids that covered the various literary genres. (I thought it would be way over his head, but he's interested, and he's getting it!) For each book they read, they get to put a paper book on their bookshelf in the appropriate color for the genre it was from.

Figuring out the genre of the books they read has been kind of fun for them. It's been like a little puzzle they get to figure out.

(I'm missing "Nonfiction" on our chart still!)

My Little Reader loves his little paper bookshelf that I hung on the wall in our bonus room. He helped me put a couple books on it that he's read. One of the books is The Mouse and The Motorcycle, which we all just finished reading aloud together (now we're reading The Secret of Platform 13).

Since his brother and sister are reading chapter books, I'm trying to keep devise a way to kind of keep things level with filling their paper bookshelves (I have competitive kids). I decided he has to read 4 books per day with me (in addition to his bedtime stories) and if he meets his reading requirement all week, then he can choose his favorite book from the week to add to his shelf. Last week he added Color Chaos.

We also have Goodreads accounts that we like to track our reading on. My boys know that I try to record most of the books we read on Goodreads, and have gotten into the habit of giving each book we read together a star rating. "Mom, give this one four stars," one will say. "No way, two stars!" the other will counter with. It has sparked some heated debates at bedtime, let me tell ya!

There are countless ways you can record and display your child's reading progress. You could make a goal chart and color it in little by little as they inch toward their reading goal for the month or the year. You could make a paper chain, and they could add a new link for each book they read. Pinterest can help you with more ideas than you ever wanted probably!

Keep the reading excitement up and celebrate those milestones as they hit them!

Do you keep track of the books your child reads? How do you do it?