I can’t express how crazy excited the boys get over the summer reading programs. They have always enjoyed earning little trinkets for their summer reading, reading to the assist dogs, going to the programs. (See our post from last year) The joy of the Librarian over their reading accomplishments. Just for me? Not so much. For Ms. Teena? Oh The Joy!  Crazy Kids.

For me, Summer Reading Program means lists. Lots of lists, adding, writing, calculating, remembering, tracking, timing, loosing notes, re-writing notes.  . . . it goes on. So this year – I thought – Hey, It’s 2011, Right? Surely – There’s an App For That!

I’ve just gotta tell ya – This is most likely the best $3.99 I will spend all summer.  I tried a couple of the “Free” apps, but you have to tweek them so much. This one? Right Out Of The iTunes Store Ready.  Seriously.

Here is the end result of about 15 days – I can email myself the reports, print them out, and the boys can fill out their forms.  We are keeping track of Total Minutes, since the report prints this way, so if we print a report that had 236 minutes, draw a line, 430 minutes, draw a line, and this form, 558 minutes – draw a line and a date.  They get a prize for every three hours that they read, so Jon will  have 3 trinkets tonight. I think Nate, in the Teen Program gets a coupon for a drawing for every hour, so he’ll have quite a few for the box as well. (9 hrs)

So – if you are heading into the Summer Reading Program, or if you are wanting to track the book reading – I say, Yes, the $4.00 is worth it!

Click on these images to go to the link in iTunes or do a search on Reading Log.

You can click Start and the timer will start on today’s time and date.  Then, you can click a Stop Button and it calculates the minutes for you.  You can add the Page Number Start/Finish too if you track pages, or if you’d like help remembering what page you are on.

The only thing that took a bit of time to figure out – You click on the file folder there on the right of the screen (These are two screen shots from the ipods), then a plus symbol will appear at the bottom, click the plus to get to the edit to add a book, or a reader. Then, back all the way out of the folder to move forward. It took a bit to get used to the steps, but now they are easy peasy. If you are listening to a book on tape, it would be nice to be able to click multiple “listeners”, but for now, just click the name, click start, back out , click a name, click start, etc. just 2 clicks each.

Enjoy! I still don’t know why homeschool boys only like to read to dogs and librarians. If you have a way to get them this excited about reading over the winter, be sure and let me know.