If your kids are like mine, like most kids, they don't much care for reading. My boys are 6 and 10 now. When they were little, they loved reading and being read to. Now, they mostly only read when they have to. I am trying to get my boys to want to read more.

To do this, they need to read something to open the door for them, to show them that reading is fun if you have the right book. So I decided to make them each a reading adventure treasure hunt for Christmas.

Basically, they will get a book that has goals every few pages. When they reach a goal, they get a treasure. They have to read the whole book to get them all.

Step 1: Choose the Book

Since I want them to read something they will like, I took them to the book store to choose a book.

A friend's child had recently had a birthday and I tried this idea out on her. She loved it and breezed through her book. My boys knew about that gift so they knew what we were doing. They both said they would like a treasure hunt themselves.

They had to choose a book that was at or slightly above their reading level and had a pretty good amount of pages. My oldest was told his had to be a minimum of 200 pages. He kept trying to choose books that had less and we're easier.

The book pictured here was chosen by my 6 year old. It is comic style so it has fewer words and more pictures, but is pretty lengthy. My 10 year old chose the sequel to The Last Kids On Earth. We had read the first one as our bed time story over a few weeks.

Step 2: Gather Treasures

Collect the treasures for the child to earn. I had several little things I had collected for Christmas already.

I had small Lego kits, drawing books, pokemon and DBZ cards, small toys, and some money.

I ended up with 23 treasures for each boy.

Step 3: Wrap Treasures

To conceal the treasures, I used paper lunch bags for the majority. Almost all of them fit in a bag. I folded over the top and stapled it shut.

Write a goal number on each bag if you want the treasures to be opened in a certain order. Maybe saving the best for last. If you don't care for the order, no numbers are really necessary.

Place all the treasures in a box.

Step 4: Mark the Goals

There are a couple ways to measure out the goals.

You could simply go by chapters. Every chapter would be a new goal. This would be the easiest way, but some books have some really short chapters and then some really long ones, so the goals would vary in size. And then, some books don't have chapters at all.

Another way is to just take the total number of pages and divide it by the number of treasures. Then place a goal at each interval so the goals are all of similar length.

Kaidens book had 203 pages and Zanders had 287 pages. These numbers don't divide prettily by 23. You can see by the photos how I broke it down.

Zanders goals ended up being every 12 or 13 pages while Kaidens goals were every 8 or 9 pages.

Start at page 1 and count to the first goal, say page 13, and write in the book at the bottom of the page
"goal 1" then count from there to the next goal and write "goal 2" and so on. The last page should have the last goal.

**It's a good idea to keep track of how many goals you have written on a sheet of paper so you don't repeat a goal or skip one**

I included a congratulatory note on the back page of the book as well.

Then just add the book to the box of treasures and wrap it all up!

I am excited to see how quickly they get through the books and how much they enjoy the journey.