Submitted by Lana Berning And Sierra Sikich Loveland Northern and Northeastern Colorado
We love reading! And we wanted to share that love with others.
We looked at our community and decided that the best way to instill the love of books was to start early, we knew that not every family could afford a lot of books, so we set out to give a book that they could keep to each preschooler in our school district.
We wanted to collect 1,500 books to give out. We met with the preschool team for the district to discuss what we wanted to do, They thought it was a wonderful way to help young children to love reading. We put together a donation letter and went to all the local bookstores asking for donations. With the help of friends, family and Book Haven (a used book store here in Loveland) We collected over 2,200 books.
WOW! we never expected to get that many. Our next step was contacting the preschools. We got a list from our contact at the school district and sent out email’s and made calls to set up days and times that we can go in to read a story to the kids and give them books. We went to all 14 preschools that are part of our school district and read Green Eggs and Ham to the kids, and since we had gotten so many more books than we set out for we were able to give each child 2 books of their own to keep.
We had many books left over which included quite a few chapter books. So we decided to donate them to Alternatives to Violence to build a library in their Safe house and to donate some to the School District to split between the preschools to have more books on hand for the kids to read and enjoy.
We had a lot of fun collecting books to share the love of reading with. It felt amazing to see all the excited faces of the preschoolers when the got their books and we told them they where theirs to keep. We hope that the many kids we read to will continue reading and enjoying all the places you can visit and adventures you can have through books.
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