Summer Kidstop Kids Read More Than Half a Million Minutes

With the school year well underway, summer hasn’t been completely forgotten.

Students and staff involved in the summer Kidstop Child Care Summer Program, part of the , recently found out the student readers ranked 12th in the international Scholastic Summer Challenge.

During the summer, 4,193 schools representing 22 countries logged 64,213,141 reading minutes – breaking last year’s record of 52,710,368 in the challenge.

The Kidstop Summer Program with the Osseo School District was the only Minnesota school to rank in the top 20, logging in reading 659,006 minutes. The spot earned the group a listing in the 2012 Scholastic Book of World Records.

“We did much better than expected – the students did very well,” District 279 Community Education Program Manager Melissa Heinrich said.

Summer Kidstop sites at , , and Edinbrook Elementary along with the SPOT Program at all participated. According to Heinrich, it was the first year of participation and students had a seven-week late start in the reading challenge than other schools.

“If we had another seven weeks, we could have logged in over one million minutes,” she said, indicating parents were “very excited” about the challenge and “it excited kids to read over the summer.”

If given the opportunity during the summer of 2012, Heinrich anticipates the summer Kidstop students will likely take the challenge again.

“Scholastic congratulates all the students who participated in the Scholastic Summer Challenge and helped set a new world record for summer reading,” said Scholastic Chief Academic Officer Francie Alexander. “These students begin the school year better prepared for the more challenging work they face in the next grade level.”

Kidstop is a year-round, school-age care program offered for children in kindergarten through sixth grader in the .