February is I Love To Read Month and local elementary students are getting into the spirit.

Karen Fraser is the Vice Principal at Woodlawn School. She notes Woodlawn is combining literacy with math this year in what they are calling I Love To Read About Math Month. She notes they are providing an incentive to encourage the students to read.

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Each syrup bottle is dedicated to a principalThree of us will have maple syrup poured on our heads if they read 150 math books. We have a big Canadian flag out in front of the school and the students have to take a picture of the math book that they read and put it on the Canadian flag and the motto is sort of cover the red, syrup on head.”

Fraser says it is also a way to celebrate Canada's 150th birthday.

Susan Gudmundson is the Chair of School Literacy at Southwood School. She says their big event for I Love To Read Month this year is reading bingo.

“We are sending home a bingo challenge, it is a challenge for kids to read as much as they can in February and every time they do something cool with reading they check something off on a bingo sheet, things such as reading with an accent, read to a stuffy, read with a hat on, read after you brush your teeth, just things to make reading more fun for the month of February.”

Gudmundson says the class that participates the most will get to dump buckets of slime on the principals head at an assembly in March. She notes they will also drop everything and read at random times throughout the month.

“At random times throughout the month we will hear music over the intercom and they just have to stop when they are doing, whether it is science or math or gym or music and grab their books and read quietly for 10 or 15 minutes.”

Gudmundson says they encourage reading all year long but they really step it up for February.