Book reports. The kids read a book and fill out a book report form. Based on the difficulty of the book, the adherence to the form requirements, and the insight of the answers (expectation of "insight" = age) an amount is entered into their checkbook register.
During the year as I see interesting stuff on sale for dirt-cheap I'm going to accumulate items for an auction. At the end of the year we'll have our auction and the kids will use the amount of money that they have in their "accounts" to outbid each other for the items that they most want.
We did this in 3rd-grade and I loved it. I loved the checkbooks, I loved watching my account grow, and I loved the auction (I cleaned up). Granted, the competition was a lot more fun because I wasn't just bidding against one other person (my sibling), but nonetheless it's a fun memory that I have, and when I told the kids about it they asked if we could do it. For the most part they are turning in book reports rather regularly without me reminding them.
The book report forms will morph into actual book reports in the next couple of months. For now they are learning to extract: primary characters vs. secondary characters; the important events; the events that are cool/funny, but not important; and something that they learned and can apply to their lives.
They are also learning small basics like writing about events in books in present tense and underlying titles. We are having two-second micro-lessons on which words are to be capitalized (not: articles, conjunctions, or prepositions, and usually not "to" -- unless those words are the first or last word in the title). To be honest, we are usually calling those "short words that aren't that important to the meaning of the title." I have no doubt an author of a book that has used an article in an inspired/critical/artsy/edgy/insightful way would freak out about that sum-up, but whatever... we're doing the best we can here.
