REGION: Preschoolers receive books to build literacy

Project encourages families to read together

By RANI GUPTA - Staff Writer | Friday, October 10, 2008 11:05 PM PDT ∞

Preschoolers in Lake Elsinore and Wildomar soon will be receiving new books each week as part of a program to encourage early literacy among young children.

Project Read With Me is a 7-year-old effort to spur parents to read with their children, teach them to use libraries, and develop children's love of reading at an early age.

Barbara Brown, the project's coordinator for the Riverside County Library System, said the goal is to get preschool students ready to start reading or already reading by the time they begin school.

"We want to get those children ready for kindergarten," she said.

Last year, about 2,000 children countywide took part in the program, which is sponsored by First 5 Riverside.

This year, the Lake Elsinore Unified School District will offer the program for the first time to students at its Head Start locations at Heald Academy, Wildomar Elementary, Machado Elementary and the Jeannette Ellis Center, as well as to preschool students at Railroad Canyon Elementary.

Alejandra Morley, the district's Head Start parent involvement coordinator, said officials are excited about the program because it is a fun way to encourage reading among families.

Every child who participates receives a bag each week filled with four books to take home. Each week, the bag is refilled with new books, so children are exposed to about 100 titles over the course of the year. At the end of the program, each student receives a book bag and a brand-new book to keep.

Morley said the district's preschool programs already emphasize early literacy skills, and the new program reinforces those lessons.

"The idea of the program is to read aloud," Morley said. "Once the child is spending time with their parents or their caregiver or their older siblings, they will fall in love with the process and with reading. Nowadays, hardly anyone has time to sit down and read."

Morley said the program is especially important because families may not be able to afford books. Most Lake Elsinore families taking part in the program meet federal Head Start income guidelines, which means a family of four must earn $21,200 or less to be eligible.

The books are laminated, and each bag includes a book made with cardboard pages to be extra-durable, according to Brown. The bags also include multicultural and bilingual books.

About three-quarters of the parents who take part countywide are native Spanish speakers, and the program's coordinators make it a point to encourage them to read to their children in their native language if they do not speak English. That point also is driven home in orientation workshops held for parents before the first books go home.

"We have for the longest time been mistaken in this area of thinking you're going to confuse them," Brown said, "when really children who are bilingual are having a lot of opportunities."

She said reading in another language stimulates the same parts of the brain that will make it easier for a child to learn to read in English once she starts kindergarten.

Even parents who are illiterate in their own languages are encouraged to open a book and make up a story, flipping the pages and asking their children questions about what happened in the story.

Brown said that because the preschoolers are learning "preliteracy skills" and are not actually reading yet, they won't know that the spoken words don't correspond to the ones on the page. And by creating a situation where children are listening regularly to their parents tell stories, Brown said, children will be encouraged to continue the practice when they learn how to read.

"Whether they (parents) read or not, spending time with children and flipping through the book and saying this is important, their children are going to be better off," she said. "We're asking for that quality bonding time that unfortunately in our culture has been lost."

The project's coordinators also teach parents how to use the library and encourage them to apply for a library card.

"We don't just target the families and the children," Brown said. "We target the teachers, because a lot of them are not aware of the services of the libraries."

Preschool students at Winchester Elementary State Preschool have taken part in the program for years and love it, according to teacher Linda Epps.

"The children enjoy having their bag, bringing it back to school," she said. "The parents seem really appreciative as well."

Epps said families like the variety of books they read over the year.

"Especially out here in Winchester, it's kind of rural," she said. "People who wouldn't normally go to the library a lot, this gives them a big exposure to books they would not otherwise have."

Contact staff writer Rani Gupta at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2625, or rgupta@californian.com.

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