Do your kids love to collect things? If they’re anything like mine, they’re badgering you at the first sign of a potential new collection: Pokemon cards, Chaotic cards, Beyblades, SillyBandz (shudder), you name it. What do they do with them? Lose them everywhere, leave them in piles all around the house, fight over unfair trades… Ok, so maybe that’s just my kids. As far as I can tell, most of the time it’s simply a race to see who can collect the most, the fastest. Add notions of ‘rare’, ‘super rare’ and (gasp!) ‘ultra rare’, and you turn it into an absolutely must-have collection. I’ll never forget the look on a poor store manager’s face last year when those dreaded Silly Bandz were all the craze: she simply could not keep up with the waves of kids coming in, raiding her displays, literally going berserk if a new pack came in. For colored elastic bands!!

Reading Rewards Badge

Badge in the Smiley collection

This got me thinking… What if we rewarded kids (Reading Rewards kids, that is!)  with a card of some sort, every time they reached a reading milestone? Show them all the cards they can collect if they keep reading. Make some more desirable than others. Make some …. (gasp!) ULTRA rare! :-) I can see the reading frenzy starting already!

Introducing RR badges, the latest must-have collection for your RR kids!  Only this time, instead of shelling out your hard-earned cash to add to their collection, your kids will just have to keep reading and logging their minutes on Reading-Rewards.com!

Kids will earn random badges the following ways, up to a maximum of 1 per day per achievement:

  • Reaching a daily reading target
  • Reaching a weekly target
  • Finishing a book
  • Reviewing a book (we’re looking for more than just ‘cool book!’, by the way)

Kids will be able to see their own badges, as well as those of other members. Eventually, I’d love to add the ability for kids to trade them, I think that would add an element of fun! One thing at a time… Of course some are rare, and some are SUPER RARE!

I hope your kids enjoy this new feature, please let me know your thoughts!

Happy Reading!

Michelle

PS Want even more badges? With a Premium or School account, teachers and librarians can create custom reading badges to turn their students into Super Readers. Find out more.

The Reading Rewards reading program is an online reading incentive/reading log website that can be found at www.reading-rewards.com. Kids log their reading time, and are invited to review their books once they’ve finished them. Once their reading entries get validated by a parent (optional), their minutes get converted to points (RR Miles) they can use to redeem for rewards that their parents or teachers set up for them. A full set of features allow teachers to set up groups for their classes and track individual and group reading. A great alternative to paper reading logs!