After over a year of planning, I finally launched my library’s 1000 Books Before Kindergarten program last week. These blog posts often focus more on day-to-day or week-to-week library activities, like reading, programs, and storytimes, but on any random day, I’m also working on a lot of large behind-the-scenes projects too. I’m thrilled to finally be able to share one of those projects with you.
This post will focus on the logistics of the program as well as our physical workbook. Check back for Part 2, focusing on our online component run through ReadSquared.
And before this gets buried in all the upcoming text, a big shout out to my library’s marketing department who designed the physical book and put up with all of my edit requests.
What is 1000 Books?
1000 Books Before Kindergarten is a nationwide initiative, adapted by many libraries and educational institutions, to promote reading and encourage child/caregiver bonding through reading.
The goal is simple and pretty self explanatory: read 1000 books together before your child starts kindergarten.
Why run a 1000 Books Before Kindergarten program?
A child is more successful in school when an adult actively read, spoke, and engaged with them during the 0-5 years. The more words children hear at young ages, the larger their vocabulary, and the more prepared they will be to learn to read. Setting a high goal with a concrete reward system—like reading 1000 books before starting kindergarten—encourages adults to actively and continuously engage with their children. Children who start out ahead typically end up ahead. Studies show that these early language needs are even higher in lower socioeconomic households.
Other benefits to a 1000 Books program:
- Brings a sense of ownership and pride to reading. After completing this program, kids know they accomplished something big.
- Builds parent knowledge and interest about their role in school readiness.
- From a library statistics perspective, 1000 Books programs boost circulation numbers.
How long will this take?
Parents may be daunted by the large number, but, by just reading one book a day, a child should finish the program in less than three years. Some possible program lengths:
- 1 book a day = 1,000 books in 3 years
- 2 books a day = 1,000 books in 1.5 years
- 3 books a day = 1,000 books in 1 year
- 5 books a day = 1,000 books in 6 months
1000 Books Before Kindergarten Program Specifics
Before starting your program, there are some specifics you need to figure out. These include:
- How will participants log their reading?
- What are the incentives?
- How will you fund the program?
- Answers to Participant FAQs
How will participants log their reading?
We give participants two options: a physical, spiral-bound workbook (more info below) and an online system managed through ReadSquared (more on that in a future post).
What are the incentives?
Our incentives include:
- Sign up = workbook & pencil
- 100 books read = 1 sticker for every 100 books read (10 total)
- 500 books read = free book
- 1,000 books read = free book, backpack, graduation certificate & invitation to annual graduation ceremony
I’ll share pictures of some of these below, but the timeline for purchasing some of these items depends on reaching certain program milestones (such as registering our first 50 kids). So, while I know what I would like to order, specific prize books have not been officially selected yet. For each prize book earned, families will have a choice between three prize book options.
How will you fund the program?
Our program is sponsored by our library’s Foundation. (Those incentives aren’t cheap!) I wanted to make this a program that would really engage our community and keep them participating over the years it will take them to finish, so we chose incentives that will hopefully encourage people to keep participating.
Answers to Participant FAQs
Your library’s answers to these questions might differ, but some of our FAQ include:
What if someone else reads to my child?
Count all reading! Books read by caregivers, siblings, grandparents, friends, teachers, librarians, and more all count. Watch a storytime and count those books, too.
What if we read the same book more than once?
Every time you read a book, count it in your reading log! Repetition is wonderful for reading development. Your child will notice new details during each reread. If you read Pete the Cat ten times in one day, that counts as ten books read!
We finished! Can we keep reading?
Of course! While you can only receive prizes once, we encourage you to keep going. Stop by the library anytime for book recommendations.
1000 Books Before Kindergarten Workbook
At sign-up, each reader gets their own physical workbook and a pencil to log their reading. I love our 64-page workbook filled with many pages to log your reading, early literacy tips and book recommendations, advertisements for various library services, and more.
Our workbook begins with a page to label your workbook in case it is lost and to track how long the program took you to complete.
The next spread focuses on how the program works and those frequently asked questions we highlighted above.
Moving on to a spread with a reminder to log online if you would like (more on that in Part 2) and the first of two All About Me pages. This page should be filled out at the beginning of the program, with the second, similar page being filled out after you’ve read 1000 Books.
Next come the early literacy spreads! I love how these turned out. Four age ranges are featured: 0-1, 1-2, 2-3, and 3-5. Each spread has an early literacy tip for read, sing, talk, play and write, as well as 12 book recommendations.
Listing books in a printing of this volume (we purchased 1000 of these logbooks at once!) was quite an endeavor. While we still ended up publishing pages filled with many of my favorite books, some of these were round two or round three suggestions. I worked with our collection development team to find books that we could bulk up on copies of now and that we would hopefully still be able to purchase (or would still own) in 3-5 years, since these log books will be sticking around a while.
Next we have lots and lots of book logging pages. Each page contains 25 images. Each image represents one book. Families can color or check off each image for each book read.
Pages marking 100-book intervals have a special spot for a sticker that participants can pick up at the library. Our marketing department designed and printed our stickers in house on label paper:
But what if a family really wants to write down the names of the books they read? There are a few pages to record up to 30 favorite titles in the workbook, and the online system encourages writing out each title.
Wrapping up the workbook, we have our second All About Me page and advertisements for some of our other library programs and services.
Learn more about our program on our website, and come back next week for more information about our online ReadSquared page!
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I absolutely love how this is organized. Did you make the journals in house, or did you contract out to a printer? I am looking to update our program and this post has given me a lot of great ideas!
Hi! Thanks for stopping by! Our amazing marketing department did the design work for the log books, with a lot of input from myself and youth department, but we did send them to a professional printer for publishing. I believe in the 1000 quantity, they were a little under $5 a book. They would have been cheaper if we had used a different binding, but I’m partial to the spiral layout. Just let me know if you have any more questions — I’m happy to chat!