Our summer program at our library was just sitting down and listening to live speakers, and it was a lottery where they'd had out free books every week. They gave us coupons for reading too, but it was like for every 7 books you read.
They need to do it on a per grade level basis, one winner per grade. But honestly, they're making such a big deal for something that probably won't even be a big problem next year since he's going to be in 5th grade and he'd have reached that age limit where the program isn't even suitable for him anymore.
We only had a two books out limit at our school, but my mom always went in there and grabbed a bunch after hours for me when I was in elementary school. I think we had like three reading programs if I remember correctly...
The teachers made us read everyday, then there was the one where we had to read all the Bluebonnet Award winning books, and then another. They don't do the third one anymore, which I'm perfectly thrilled that my brother never had to do.
The way it worked is that every book was numbered with points. You had to get like 20 points every six weeks. The points were based on review questions you'd have to go and answer on the program in the library. I think the biggest issue with it, especially because I could never do it and I knew books from back to front (because I usually read pages a few times before flipping the page
), is that it was too random and obscure. Like it would ask you about something in the story, but something that was meaningless. And so you could know the plot, the settings, the characters, but it would ask you about someone's dog and other weird stuff that most of us wouldn't recall.
Thankfully that was one of the things that went when they started scaling down on the budget. Because it was just awful. I got a lot of notes sent home about never getting any points, but honestly, it was just that hard to do and I ended up just blowing it off for that reason.