{"id":1815,"date":"2010-04-22T19:12:14","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T02:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=1815"},"modified":"2010-04-22T19:12:16","modified_gmt":"2010-04-23T02:12:16","slug":"a-head-start-day-plus-the-daily-picture-for-april-20-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=1815","title":{"rendered":"A Head Start Day … Plus the Daily Picture for April 20, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Memorial<\/a>
Memorial Plaque<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every couple of months an opportunity comes up to read to pre-school children enrolled in Head Start<\/a>. This is a program designed to help young children from disadvantaged households become ready to start school when they become old enough. The program focuses on helping these kids learn social skills, focus skills, and attention skills. I really admire the teachers and aides working with these kids, many of whom come from extremely dysfunctional situations.<\/p>\n

A few times a year through the efforts of the service organizations in town, children’s books are donated to the program and volunteers come into the school to read these books to the children. Enough books are donated so each child can have one of them for their very own (which really excites these kids). Hopefully when they take the books home, someone in the family will read it to them again and again.<\/p>\n

Reading to children is the single most important thing that families can do to prepare their children for school.<\/p>\n

Today I read two books (one was a counting book about animals having fun, and the other was the Gingerbread Man book, that is, Run Run as fast as you can, but you’ll never catch the gingerbread man) to a group of 3-year-olds. Once I start reading they all pay rapt attention and after the book they all want to say something about the book … and I let them all talk in turn. After that I read a book about butterflies to a group of 4-year-olds who are growing butterflies in their class. The caterpillars have spun their cocoons and soon will emerge as butterflies. These kids, although a year older, have very similar reactions, except they want to talk after every page!<\/p>\n

This is a very fun activity. Every time it comes up, I volunteer to go. During the summer \u00c2\u00a0the schools sponsor lunch in the park … every kid who shows up gets a free lunch every day during the summer (paid for with federal grant money). On Wednesdays volunteers team up with the bookmobile and read stories to the kids while they’re eating their lunch. I’ll be part of that activity this summer as well.<\/p>\n

TTFN!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every couple of months an opportunity comes up to read to pre-school children enrolled in Head Start. This is a program designed to help young children from disadvantaged households become ready to start school when they become old enough. The program focuses on helping these kids learn social skills, focus skills, and attention skills. I … Continue reading A Head Start Day … Plus the Daily Picture for April 20, 2010<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pnKxs-th","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1816,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1815\/revisions\/1816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}