Friday, March 02, 2007

Reading Good...Pizza Bad

Here is a link to an article to on msnbc.com.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17422250/

It talks about the Book It reading program in which children read a certain about of books or minutes and earn a free, personal-sized pizza from Pizza Hut. Many are saying this program encourages childhood obsesity as other say it is great way to encourage reading.

If you have been reading this blog, I think it is clear that I think reading is important, for all ages. And I think any program that gets kids to read is a good thing. I remember participating in this program when I was a kid...hey, Mom, free pizza!! I was excited and wanted to read more to get that pizza (we never got to have Pizza Hut). And now my daughter is participating in the program and she loves it (not that she has to work super hard to reach the goals, she reads every day). At my daughter's school they have to read an average of 15 minutes a day all month.

In the short of it....most kids eat pizza (hey, they serve it every Friday for lunch at school). Why not give the kids and families an opportunity to earn a free pizza by doing something that is great for them...reading.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As an elementary teacher, I would highly encourage your child to participate in the Book-It program! It is challenging for many parents (and even teachers) to encourage children to read on a daily basis for pure enjoyment! Since it is hard to prove if a child reads or not, often teachers require students to write about their reading which then makes reading even more of a turn off-especially for those kids who aren't good readers or who already don't look forward to reading. The only thing I would ask of you parents is to be honest about signing off on those Book-It calendars and hold your child responsibile for his/her reading! And is pizza all that bad for you ? It does have all the food groups, right?

Melissa Niksic said...

I was a Book-It kid, too!