Scholastic Reading Club Sales

Elliott has been saving his money carefully over the last few weeks.  He had been saving most of his money for a 3DS, but when he saw all the Scholastic book sales this month and last month he decided to wait a while on the 3DS.  He had a really long list of books that he wanted, so he saved every penny he could, and even did a few extra chores to make extra money.

Since we have a homeschool account (it's really easy to sign up for one if you are a homeschooler!), we get the same bonus points and teacher opportunities that any other teachers get.  That means we get a lot of free books with our regular orders.  The back to school sales have historically always been some of the best of the year, and this year is no different.  The bonus points go really high if you end up with a fairly large order.  Plus there are coupons for free books for the class, and a free 10 pack of books for the classroom library.

I told Elliott that he could use all the bonus points he earned on his own order on whatever books he wants, and I wouldn't give him a hard time, even if I think the books he picks out are overpriced.  Haha.    He was pretty excited about that, because apparently I tend to tell him he could use his money better elsewhere. ;)

If your kids go to public or private school and get Scholastic book orders right now is a fantastic time to order books.  The teachers will get more bonus points than at any other time of year, and they can use them to build their classroom library or get other nice things for their classroom.  Plus there are more $1 and $2 books in the back to school flyers, and more great deals on larger packs.

We just placed our first order of the school year (most of the stuff was Elliott's, but we actually did have a friend who ordered stuff for her kids this time, too, plus I ordered a few things for gifts and for the giveaway I hosted recently).  We ended up spending about $2 on each book on average.  We also ended up with a lot of great freebies, like free book coupons, posters and stickers, along with enough bonus points to get over $300 worth of books free on future orders!

We love Scholastic book orders because they have such a great variety of books, and most the time have reasonable prices.  We literally have hundreds and hundreds of books that we have bought from Scholastic over the years, and many of them are among Elliott's favorites.

Back to School Giveaway

Elliott and I have spent the last 2 or 3 weeks finalizing our list of must reads for school this year.  We ended up coming up with 20 books that we will read for sure this year.  We read together for about 30-45 minutes every day, and I read to him for another 15-20 minutes during snack time.  He also reads to me most days of the week.  So 20 will almost certainly not be enough books to last all school year, but I think it's a good start.  Plus it gives us the opportunity to watch for more must reads as we learn about different things.

In honor of school starting, and preparing our own book lists, Elliott and I decided to do a book giveaway of our own!  All the books will be brand new scholastic books.  There will be two random winners, and each winner will get to pick the prize pack of their choice.

Prize pack 1:  Early Chapter Books

 

Horrible Harry in Room 2B by Suzy Kline
A Jigsaw Jones Mystery:  The Case of the Stinky Science Project by James Preller
Ready, Freddy!  The King of Show-And-Tell by Abby Klein
Cam Jansen and the School Play Mystery by David A. Adler
Junie B., First Grader: One-Man Band by Barbara Park

Prize Pack 2:  Early Chapter Books



Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus by Barbara Park
Stink: The Incredible Shrinking Kid by Megan McDonald
The Bailey School Kids Jr Chapter Books #5: Dragons Do Eat Homework By Debbie Dadey
The Kids of the Polk Street School: The Beast in Ms. Rooney's Room by Patricia Reilly Giff
Herbie Jones and the Second Grade Slippers by Sami Sweeten


Prize Pack 3: Chapter Books



Third-Grade Detectives #1: The Clue of the Left-Handed Envelope by George E. Stanley
Judy Moody by Megan McDonald
Clementine by Sara Pennypacker
Third Grade Angels by Jerry Spinelli
Stuart Goes to School by Sara Pennypacker

Prize Pack 4: I Can Read! Picture books



 Little Critter: To the Rescue! by Mercer Mayer
What's That, Mittens? by Lola M. Schaefer
Mittens at School by Lola M. Schaefer
Little Critter: This is My Town by Mercer Mayer
Dixie and the Class Treat  by Grace Gilman
Dixie by Grace Gilman

This giveaway isn't sponsored by Scholastic.  We just chose Scholastic books because we love them so much and want to share them with others!  We've read more than a dozen of the ones that are offered as prizes and liked them all.

Entry-Form

Scholastic Books

One of the first things that I did after filing paperwork with the school about homeschooling Elliott next year was sign up for scholastic reading club.  I've been buying books for Elliott through Scholastic reading club since right before he was born, since I have a sister that is a teacher.  They have some great, quality books cheaper than anywhere else, and it's easy to see what is appropriate for each age.  He's always enjoyed books, but he especially enjoyed getting the flyers at school over the last two years and going through and picking some books out by himself.  My sister that lives up here is now a preschool teacher and uses Scholastic reading club, so we could order books for him whenever we wanted anyway, but I have to admit that we were both excited about starting our own account.

It was pretty easy to sign up as a homeschooler at Scholastic.  I just had to talk to someone on the phone for a few minutes to verify that I was indeed going to be homeschooling Elliott, and she got it all taken care of.  With a homeschool account, you earn bonus points the same way that you do as a public or private school teacher.  Obviously I won't be earning them as fast since I will only be ordering for Elliott mainly, but it still adds up pretty fast.  Especially considering that for several years now I've ordered more from Scholastic than the rest of my sister's class put together.  We really like books at our house. :)  I was able to join in late March, even though we were finishing up the year in public school.  The lady I talked to was super nice and said they let people go ahead and start early in case they need anything for the schooling they will do during the summer.

Our Recent Reading List

I know it's been a while since I've posted about the books we are reading at our house.  We do still read a lot,  but it seems like now that the books we read are often longer, and Elliott has more homework, we just don't get as much reading done together as we would like.  Currently Elliott is kind of transitioning more and more away from picture books.  There are still a few that he loves, but he very rarely reaches for one anymore, unless it's a holiday themed one.  Of course right now we are reading some Easter picture books, but after Easter he might not touch another picture book until we pull out Halloween books.

We just finished reading all of the Guardians of Childhood books by William Joyce.  We really liked them all. The movie is one of Elliott's favorite, so he was excited to check out the first book. I think it took us about a week to read it. At least one of the others also went that fast, but one of them took us over two weeks to read. It wasn't that the book wasn't good, it was just a busy time. It was the one we were reading when we had a lot of extra stuff going on.   So far there are four books out, with at least one more planned.  They are most appealing to kids in grades 2-6.

Guardians of Childhood

 We are currently reading Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke.  We have only been reading it for a few days, and we both like it so far.  It's a really long book (nearly 550 pages!) so it will probably take us quite a while to read it, but so far neither of us have lost interest.  It's the first of Cornelia Funke's books we've read, but Elliott has already added another one to our wishlist on Amazon. According to Scholastic, it's most appealing to kids in third to fifth grade.

Dragon Rider

 I included links so you can learn more about the books if you like.  They are my affiliate Amazon links.

Buying Books

I've talked about how much my son likes to read on here pretty frequently.  I've even started listing some of the books that he likes, in hopes of helping other parents find books that their children might like.

It seems like we are constantly adding to our home library.  Elliott checks out 2 books at a time from his school library, 1-2 times each week.  Otherwise most of the books we read are books that we have at home.  We don't have a library in town, and we just don't make it onto base during library hours very often.  We live far enough away from base that driving there just for a trip to the library isn't worth the time or money ($6-7 in gas to get there and back).

So to add new books to our rotation, we order books from scholastic book orders from school or look for them used.  During the summer, we can usually find a few at yard sales.  We don't make it to enough yard sales to make that one of the places that we buy lots of books, though. 

We also like to look for used books when we are shopping at a thrift store.  Once again, though, we just don't make it there often enough.   There are some we like in Minot, but it's 45 minutes away, so definitely not worth a trip just to go to thrift stores.  We've been trying to go more lately when we are already in Minot, though.  For instance on Monday after my doctor's appointment we stopped in at our favorite one and Elliott found 8 books he wanted for $.50 each, and I even found 1 I wanted for only $1!

Elliott's finds at the thrift store this week.

We've also bought books online from a few different places, but have decided that it's hard to beat the prices on Ebay.  If we can find a lot of books that I know Elliott will like, I can often get them for under $1 each, including shipping!  While I was stuck in my recliner recovering from gallbaldder surgery, I ended up doing a lot (too much) of shopping on Ebay and stocked up on some great titles for Elliott for his summer reading plans.  The most I paid per book was $1.27 including shipping.  I even scored some chapter books for him in a big lot for under $.50 each with free shipping!

Our most expensive recent Ebay finds.  Several of these look like they've never even been opened and we paid less than $11.50 for all nine!

Elliott's Reading List April 12

Elliott and I have recently been adding to his book collection again.  We got rid of over 300 books that he decided he had outgrown earlier this year, and we've been working on adding more chapter books and looking for new ones to try.

This week he didn't read any new chapter book series, but he wanted me to tell you about  other books that he likes.  He's decided to help me write these blog posts, by doing book reports for me.




One of the series that he thinks is perfect for kids who like picture books is Pete the Cat by Eric Litwin.  He thinks that the books are appropriate for preschool to second graders.  The reading levels range from kindergarten to end of first grade.

We like that the books are upbeat and fun.  He also likes that the cat wears shoes.  He has two of them, and while they aren't books that we have ever read every week or anything, they are ones that he goes back to, and has read several times.



Another series that is relatively new to Elliott is Nate the Great by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat.  These books have been around since the 70's, so some of you probably remember them from your own childhood.

Elliott loves the Nate the Great books he has read so far.  He thinks they are funny, and he likes the mystery.  His favorite characters are Nate and his dog Sludge.  Elliott really likes it that Nate is independent and can do a lot of things for himself.  He especially thinks it's cool that Nate makes his own pancakes.

Elliott says this book was a little easy to read, and probably best for readers that are 7-10.  He thinks that preschoolers through third or fourth graders would probably like the stories.

Our Current Reading List

A reader recently asked me to give some specific books that Elliott has read recently and which series I would suggest for 1st and 2nd grade boys.  So I decided just to put up a post every week or two with some of the books that Elliott has read recently and liked.  This week I'm going to start with some series that we've been reading, but I'm hoping to post about some individual books later, too.

 

Right now Elliott is really into the Black Lagoon Adventures chapter books.  He reads one pretty much every day.  And yes, I mean he reads the entire book (they are only 60 something pages each, with lots of pictures) in a fairly short amount of time.  He got a set of 17 for his birthday last month, and already had 2 others.  He's read all of them since his birthday, and read a lot of them at least twice.  He's read the Halloween one so frequently that he can recite much of it word for word.  It's probably his very favorite book right now.  They are early chapter books.  According to Scholastic, they are for 2nd-3rd grades, and have reading levels from 2.4-3.8. 

This reading level system is pretty easy to understand.  The number before the period is the grade level, and the number after the period is the month.  So for instance, the reading level of 2.4 would be the level that a student that meets standards would be able to read in the fourth month of second grade.

They are fun books to read.  The narrator has a very active imagination, and always imagines that things are going to be crazier or scarier than they really are. Elliott laughs and says that things wouldn't REALLY be the way that Hubie imagines that they would be, but still really enjoys the crazy things that Hubie thinks about.  



He's also really into Geronimo Stilton right now.  He asked me if I thought the Easter Bunny would bring him Geronimo Stilton books this year if he's really good.  These books are a little pricier than a lot of chapter books for kids, but they are full color.  There are plenty of pictures, and some of the words are in different colors, fonts, and boldness.  He doesn't read these nearly as fast, but does enjoy a chapter or two at a time.  There are a lot of these books (over 50), so they could keep a child busy for quite some time.  According to Scholastic they appeal to grades 2-4, and are 4th grade reading level.  Even if your child isn't an advanced reader, these would be a fun series to read together.

Geronimo Stilton is a mouse, and the stories are told from his perspective.  Some of the vocabulary used by him is a play on words that we use, just made into mouse-y words.  Like he lives in New Mouse City, Mouse Island.  Things are fabumouse, etc.  The stories are good, and as I said before, the presentation is awesome.  The book includes lots of detailed pictures, including maps and charts.

 

One of Elliott's favorite picture book series is Skippyjon Jones.   Skippyjon is a cat who imagines he is a Chihuahua.  He imagines that he goes on a lot of adventures.  They have some made up words, and some Spanish vocabulary as well, so Elliott has a little trouble with a few words in most of them.  They have reading levels 3.3-4.0 and appeal to kids in kindergarten through 2nd grade.

Encouraging a Love of Reading

My son loves to read.  He has a library at home larger than that of his classroom, and he is always asking to add to it.  For Christmas Santa brought him the first 43 books books in the Magic Tree House series (we had already read 5 or 6, but he was super excited to have them all), along with 3 Skippyjon Jones books, and a few others as well.  We also did 25 days of books at our house for Christmas, where every night, Elliott got to open a new book that I had wrapped up, and then he read that one to us, as well as a Christmas book or two.  It was a big hit, and we all really enjoyed it.  He ended up with even more books on Christmas from us as, and a set of 3 from an aunt, for a total of about 90 all together for Christmas.

Because he loves to read so much, finding books he will like is relatively easy.  However, finding books that are age appropriate, as well as challenging can be a little more difficult.  He's only in first grade (he will be 7 next week) but already reads on an upper fifth grade level.  He loves everything from easy picture books, to chapter books.