Good Morning Everyone!

Let’s look at literacy today!  As parents, we all recognize the importance of literacy skills and the impact it has on development in academics, social/emotional competence, and life skills.  Here are some easy tips to ensure we are supporting our children at home and at school to promote literacy!

Literacy Tips:

1. Set aside some time on a calendar (this makes it important) that you will spend one on one time with your child.  Our busy schedules often we forget that our children will benefit from some one on one time.  It can be a date night with mom or dad, a walk, a game, reading a book together, or really anything.  Focus on putting away the technology (yes that means our smart phones) and make even 10 minutes for just you and your child!
2. Use travel time to talk with your children.  You have an audience that cannot walk away.  Just ensure we turn off the phone and in some cases the videos!  Talk about your day, ask about theirs, plan a weekend event, or a high interest item.  Literacy is based in our ability to read, listen, comprehend, participate, and write whether it is books, mathematical symbols, signs, or language.  Just talking with our children promotes literacy.
3. Have DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read) as a family.  Your children will benefit from seeing you read from a book, magazine, or newspaper (not the kindle :)).  This deems reading as IMPORTANT!
4. Help your child make a book!  It can be simple as them drawing the pictures and you writing the words as they dictate for younger students or elaborate for those older students.  It combines literacy with art.  Write stories, poems, alphabet or number books, family story books (tell the story of a vacation), or make cards.  Use different types of paper, make different types of book covers and/or bindings, and SHARE.  Check out this website for some fun book making ideas: http://www.makingbooks.com/families.shtml
5. Have your child help you with writing TO DO lists or grocery lists.
6. Go on “field trips” and talk about what you see along the way, write a story about it later, or just have them talk about it to someone else later.  Fieldtrips can be to the grocery store, the post office, a nature walk/hike, the zoo, or anywhere you are headed.

Community Events (3 events) check them out!

Junior Master Gardener
Thursday, April 16, 2015 from 6:00 to 7:30 PM
Cost: $20
Event URL: www.naturefind.com

Learn about plants, gardening, insects and more with hands on activities. Youth become certified in the Golden Ray Series.

The Wizard of Oz Presented by Nampa Christian Schools
Thursday, April 16, 2015 from 7:00 to 9:00 PM
Cost: General Admission, $10
Phone: (208) 468-5555
Nampa Christian School’s Theatre Department will perform the classic story “The Wizard of Oz” with multiple performances Thursday, April 16, through Saturday, April 18, at the Nampa Civic Center.  In this charming play based on the popular L. Frank Braum stories, Dorothy and her dog Toto are caught in a tornado’s path and somehow end up in the land of Oz. Here she meets some memorable friends and foes in her journey to meet the Wizard of Oz who everyone says can help her return home and possibly grant her new friends their goals of a brain, heart, and courage.

Each day features a performance at 7 p.m. with an additional performance at 2 p.m. on Saturday and stars a cast of over 60 middle school and high school students. General admission tickets available by calling the Nampa Civic Center at (208) 468-5555, or online.