Appropriate grades or age groups:
Preschool and Younger
Elementary School
Middle School
High School & Beyond

Estimated time to complete activity or implement technique:
Month at a time

Materials needed (if applicable):
Books of choice to read.

Activity set-up/instructions or description of technique:
My son is 10 and a very advanced reader mostly because we set an example by being reading parents.

One thing we do to encourage his reading on his own is to ask him to set a monthly reading goal. For example, his goal for the month of May was to read 9 chapter books. We go to the library together and choose a pile of books for him to pick from throughout the month. I supervise his choices making sure they are his level or above and good reading material. If he chooses a book that is 300 pages or more, he gets an extra count towards his goal.

We just recently added an extra bonus by offering $5 if he meets or beats his goal for the month. If he does not meet his goal, we don't badger him about it, but rather we adjust the next month's goal accordingly. It is not often that he misses his goal. He averages about 8 chapter books per month.

I also keep a microsoft word file of all the book titles he completes. Then, month-by-month, he gets a visual of how much he has accomplished.

I love to share book titles that I enjoyed as a child, too. He thinks it's really neat to have read anything that I or my husband read when we were his age. It was a really neat feeling to have my son come to me after reading "Where The Red Fern Grows" with tears in his eyes and tell me I was right when I said what a great book it was.

Other suggestions or comments:
Our son has a set bedtime of 10:00pm, but we allow him to stay up until 10:30/11:00pm if he would like to lay in his bed and read. This works great 'cuz he loves to stay up late! :o)

Another thing that we have always done since he was a toddler was build him up with positive words about his reading. By feeding him with words like, "You're a great reader" and "Awesome! You read that many books?!", he has always taken pride in his reading habits.

We surround all of our children with lots of books to choose from and let them read their favorites over and over if need be. When my son was 3 or 4, I thought he'd drive me nutso making me read one certain cowboy book with him over and over and over....but, that became THE very book that was his reading breakthrough and turned him into such a book lover!

He also participates in the "Book-It" program to earn Pizza Hut coupons for attaining his goal.

One last tip is to buy or borrow books that are in a series. Your child will be very excited to get the next book in the series to see what happens next. For example, this school year my son read the "Left Behind" series for kids....he could hardly wait to get to the next book of the series and has read six of the series within a week or so.