I would have said "read to them", but it seemed too obvious to mention. I loved reading to my kids at bedtime. I got A LOT better at reading aloud; I think that by the time it ended (they became faster at reading to themselves than I could read aloud), I had become quite an exciting, theatrical reader.
Something episodic, like The Arabian Nights, is useful: "It's bedtime. Do you want to know what happened to AliBaba next?" Books with illustrations are good, for avoiding interruptions like "Dad, what's an elephant?" But not picture-books; there has to be something to read. The Very Hungry Caterpillar is for them to read on their own.
Setting an annual target reading quota seems a bit like over-anxious parenting. Just read for ten minutes, 365 nights per year. You'll have to spend that ten minutes settling them anyway; might as well make it fun for them and yourself.
In my defense, we didn't set the "100" goal until we were at book 53. I happened to sit down one day and make a list of books we had read and thought, "Wow! That's a lot of books...I wonder if we could get to 100?" So it wasn't an up-front goal. It was more of an afterthought.
But, fair point about having that be the driving force to your reading. Read for the love of being with your children and sharing stories.
I would have said "read to them", but it seemed too obvious to mention. I loved reading to my kids at bedtime. I got A LOT better at reading aloud; I think that by the time it ended (they became faster at reading to themselves than I could read aloud), I had become quite an exciting, theatrical reader.
Something episodic, like The Arabian Nights, is useful: "It's bedtime. Do you want to know what happened to AliBaba next?" Books with illustrations are good, for avoiding interruptions like "Dad, what's an elephant?" But not picture-books; there has to be something to read. The Very Hungry Caterpillar is for them to read on their own.
Setting an annual target reading quota seems a bit like over-anxious parenting. Just read for ten minutes, 365 nights per year. You'll have to spend that ten minutes settling them anyway; might as well make it fun for them and yourself.