The Book Pack Program

The Book Pack Program will begin this Thursday.


Dear Parents:

We are excited to tell you about a pre-literacy initiative beginning here at the Burlington Integrated Preschool! The Book Pack Program will provide you an opportunity to enjoy time with your child through shared reading of high quality children’s literature. Research shows that time spent reading books increases children’s future reading skills.

Here is how the Book Pack Program works:

- Every Thursday you will receive a small numbered book pack with a collection of 3-4 books. The books will have a common theme.
- Included in the book pack is a recommended reading guide. The reading guide offers you suggestions and prompts for discussion about each book.
- During the week, find a time each day to read with your child. Please be sure to handle the books with care and to return them to the backpack for safe keeping.
- Return the book pack with all of the contents on the following Tuesday.

Our hope for this Book Pack Program is twofold. First we hope you can enjoy reading these books while spending special time with your child. Second, we hope the experience will provide him/her with a strong pre-literacy skill foundation.

You will receive your first book pack on Thursday October 7th!
Thank you for your participation in the Book Pack Program!

Sincerely,
The Burlington Integrated Preschool Staff

Fun Celebration

Please visit the Friendly Frogs classroom blog to see how they celebrated a birthday party without using food. Cut and paste the following link.

/friendlyfrogsnews.blogspot.com/2010/10/birthday-celebration-without-food.html

Fall Books

I found this post on http://earlyliteracyconnection.blogspot.com/ It's a great blog about early literacy.

if you find yourself leafing around for a great fall book, look no further than one of the beautiful books above all about LEAVES!

When the Leaf Blew In by Steve Metzger

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert

Leaf Season by Quintan B. Lee

The Leaves are Falling One by One by Steve Metzger

Leaves! Leaves! Leaves! by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace

Leaves, Leaves, Leaves by Melvin and Gilda Berger

Of course, there are likely many other great leaf books out there. I have merely listed are ones that I own. When looking for books consider a few things: do you want fiction or non-fiction? Children may not understand that books are about the world we live in because they get used to seeing illustrations instead of pictures. Does the book have a great rhyme? Does it have rich vocabulary? Does your child enjoy it?

Please share the names of any other great fall books. I will have more fall book lists as the weeks pass.

Visit this blog for great ideas for literacy carryover as well as suggestions of books to take out of the Burlington Public Library.http://earlyliteracyconnection.blogspot.com/

Literacy BackPacks

On Monday the staff of the Burlington Integrated Preschool spent the day putting together take home literacy backpacks. The students will have the opportunity to bring home a backpack. Each backpack will have several theme related children's books in them as well as ideas for questions or activities to complete with your child after reading the books. The goal of the program is that each child will bring home a backpack a couple of times a month. The backpack will go home on Thursday night and will be returned on Tuesday. When you have a backpack at home take some time and read the books with your child. Use the prompts to ask questions about the story. This will do several things, develop listening and comprehension skills, vocabulary development and oral language skills. Most importantly it's a special one-on-one time to spend with your child cuddling and reading great literature.

Taking home a backpack is a big responsibility and we will need your help in support in keeping this program running smoothly. When it's your weekend to have a backpack we ask that you take extra special care of the books and make sure they are not destroyed while in your care. We ask that the books are returned in the same condition they were sent to you. We realize that overtime they will become worn, but if we all work together to take good care of the books they will last a long time. It will also be very important that you return your backpacks on a Tuesday. This will ensure that another family can get them on Thursday. Keep in mind that the children will be excited to take backpacks home and if they are not returned promptly they can't go back out.

We are very excited about this home backpack program and feel that it's a great addition to our strong literacy curriculum. Please keep in mind that this program is new and will be a work in progress. We welcome your comments, suggestions and thoughts about the program. When you have a backpack for the weekend share with us what worked and didn't work and what you enjoyed and didn't like that much. The goals is to always make the program stronger and we can only do that with your input.

We hope that you enjoy your backpacks and are as excited about them as we are.

Reminder

The Burlington Integrated Preschool will be closed on Monday September 27, 2010 for a staff development day. The staff will be working on and creating thematic home literacy backpacks. We will share more information on this in the following weeks.