We Read 1000 Books in 14 Months!

I cannot believe I forgot to share with you all that we completed the 1000 Books Before Kindergarten Challenge over the summer!!! With our relocation to Florida happening several weeks later, I failed to make this post. I know, horrible job coming from a #bookblogger.

We started the 1000 Books challenge on April 12, 2018 after seeing promotions for it at our local library in Maryland. Of course we read to Maya throughout the pregnancy and daily after she was born, but the program marked the first time we officially tracked the books we read. Thankfully, our library used a cool website called Beanstack that made it extremely easy to enter books. While you may think tracking the books would be a hassle, it actually became second nature for both my husband and I. Maya was also helpful in reminding us to enter them. While the library provided printables that could be used to keep count of the number of books read, Maya got bored with them after the first 300 books or so. We only included books that were read at home, as it was too challenging to keep up with what was read at school.

The kids area of the library had one wall dedicated to the program and was decorated to look like the ocean. The wall was divided into sections and each section represented a 100 book milestone with a sea creature. After each 100 books read, Maya was given a sticker or temporary tattoo and she had to move her fish across the ocean. We also celebrated each 100 book milestone by allowing her to choose one item from our home treasure box. I filled her “owl box” with items from Target’s Bulleye’s Playground and Dollar Tree. Those goodies definitely kept her motivated!

Maya completed the challenge on July 3, 2019 and you may be wondering how we celebrated. Of course, we had to go to the library first so that she could move her fish to the 1000 books section of the ocean. Little to our knowledge, the library has a little celebration of their own! The librarian rang a bell and made an announcement to everyone there that Maya had read 1000 books before kindergarten. After the round of applause, she was given a backpack with the 1000 books logo. To celebrate the accomplishment, Maya wanted to eat ice cream at Cold Stone. It truly warms my heart to see her love for books and the library. She was just as excited about this challenge as we were!

Here are our stats:

• Challenge start date: April 12, 2018
• Challenge end date: July 4, 2019
• Total days in challenge: 1 year, 2 months, 3 days
• Number of different titles read: 476

Interested in seeing the books we’ve read? Here’s the entire list! We’d love to hear if you’ve taken the challenge and how it’s going. You can learn more about the challenge here.