Group Participants in the Children's Summer Reading Challenge
Your whole group can join in our Children's Summer Reading Challenge!
If you have a preschool, day care, or any sort of summer children's program, your whole group of kids can also participate in our Summer Reading Challenge!
How does it work?
Enroll all your kids in the challenge. Keep track of every day that they read or listen to books (either online or in a reading log we'll give you). Come to the library periodically during the summer to check in and pick up the rewards they've earned.
You can enroll your kids online OR give us the information, and we'll do it for you.
- Go to our Beanstack site: https://decaturlibrary.beanstack.org/reader365
- Click the button that says "Register an Individual or Family."
- Create an account for yourself. You'll need name, an email that you'll use for this, phone, and zip code. Create a user name (whatever you want, though something like MyKidsDaycare will make it easy for us to find everyone). You can always log in with your email OR your user name.
- THEN add individual readers to your account. For each of them, you'll need: name, age, grade fall 2023, school fall 2023 (select "other" if you don't know).
- Click the box to enroll each in the Children's Summer Reading Challenge.
Suggestions
- If you want us to register your kids, please furnish us with all the information outlined above for your account, and for each participant. You can email it to us at childrens@decaturlibrary.org.
- As you gather information for your kids, get their current t-shirt size. You won't need it to register, but if they reach goal #3, they earn a ticket for a drawing of one of 50 t-shirts we'll be giving away. That will make it easier to enter them. The available sizes are: Toddler 4T, Youth Small, Youth Medium, Youth Large, Adult Small, Adult Large.
- Schedule regular visits to the library during the summer, and let us know what days/times you'll be coming. Kids earn rewards for every 5 days of reading, so the reading goals are designed to be completed weekly. However, it may not be convenient to bring your group weekly. Some groups come every other week, and pick up two sets of rewards at a time.
- If you want to pick up printed reading logs for your group prior to your first visit, let us know how many. We'll have them available the last week of May. (Be sure each child who receives a reading log is already enrolled.)
- You can log reading days for each child online via the app or Beanstack website. (For a larger group, it is easier on the website with a laptop browser.) Or we can log their reading days each time you come to the library. Be sure to bring their reading logs. If you have a large group, it may take us a few minutes to log their days. Plan to drop off your reading logs when you arrive and browse for books. Then we'll have their rewards ready when you leave.
- It is probably easier if all your kids are on the same goal when they come to the library. That way each gets the same reward. If that is not possible, it is helpful for us if you can either 1) bundle their reading logs according to goal (these are all on goal 1, these on goal 2) OR give us a list of your kids indicating what goal each is on. Some groups create a simple spreadsheet of all their kids in the program, with a column for each goal they reach, and a place to check when they get their reading rewards for each. They print out a copy for us each time they come in.
- Plan to schedule some of your visits around special events at the library this summer. We'll have story times, READiculous shows, and lots of other fun. You can see the schedule of all our special events on Children's Summer Events page.