Fall crafts

Now that the weather has finally cooled off, and it feels like fall, you'll probably be moving towards fall themes at your Read-Alouds.  Fall is great for craft options -- leaves changing colors, spooky Halloween decorations, etc. Have other ideas?  Please share them in the comments section.

Coffee filter leaves

Celebrate the colors of fall. Cover the tables with newspaper because this can get messy. Cut leaf-like shapes out of coffee filters and let the kids color them with magic markers. Then spray the coffee filters with water to create an amazing watercolor effect. After the leaves dry, gather them to create a colorful display.

Paper pumpkin hangers

These paper pumpkins work well as hanging ornaments or room decorations. For this simple craft, you need only construction paper, staples and string.  It results in a gorgeous end product. Different size strips of orange paper stapled at the ends make the pumpkin shape.  Add a stem and leaves for the complete look.

Tissue paper tree

Everyone can make his or her own fall tree with this tissue paper craft. Let the kids draw their own tree trunks or, for a fun twist, trace their hands and arms on construction paper to serve as the trunk and branches. Then provide a variety of colors of tissue paper and encourage the kids create leaves for their tree. They can glue them flat, as in this picture, or crumple them to make a 3-D effect.

Toilet paper roll bat

An empty toilet paper roll can become a cute bat! You'll need a black bat body, which is the toilet paper roll either colored with black crayon/marker or covered with a 4" x 6" piece of black construction paper. A template for the wings can be found here. You can collect toilet paper rolls for the craft or pick them up at the TRC office. This craft could be paired with the nocturnal animals Read-Aloud or with books like Stellaluna or Bats at the Ballgame.

Paper bag owl puppet

These paper bag owls are a hoot! Transform brown lunch bags into adorable owls. Gauge the scissor skills of the kids in your group; if they're up to it, they can cut out their own wings, ears, eyes and beaks, or they can glue on pre-cut parts. Which other animal puppets would the kids at your Read-Aloud like to make?

To receive credit for this online training, please fill out the form here.

Fall 2014 at TRC

Fall started with a bang at TRC with a brand new Read-Aloud site and a fantastic Community Reading Festival in Maryland and our volunteer picnic in Arlington. We'll continue our active fall with a family-friendly race on October 19th.


New Read-Aloud Site
TRC's Read-Aloud is up and running at the Greentree Shelter in Bethesda, Md. Volunteer teams began reading weekly at the site run by the National Center for Children and Families on August 19. We're thrilled to be reading with the kids at Greentree and working with our new partner.


Community Reading Festival
TRC hosted a Community Reading Festival at Ivymount School in Maryland on September 13 to celebrate the opening of our newest Read-Aloud site at Greentree Shelter in Bethesda.  Librarian Susan Modak and children's authors Mary Quattlebaum and Erica S. Perl read to and interacted with kids. Participants also could do crafts, get their faces painted, have snacks and enjoy a show by magician Jack Julius. 

Erica Perl engages young readers!

Captain Q and Crabclaw Chris
  explain their pirate ways.

Volunteer Appreciation Picnic

Delegate Lopez reads the resolution

As a part of our 25th anniversary celebration, TRC wanted an event to honor volunteers. We hosted a volunteer appreciation picnic for TRC program, community and corporate volunteers at Quincy Park in Arlington on September 28. Delegate Alfonso Lopez attended the picnic an presented TRC with a resolution from the Virginia House of Delegates recognizing TRC's 25 years of service to the community. 

TRC volunteers and family members enjoy lunch and each other.

Staff members from Nando's Peri Peri

Delicious food was generously donated by Nando's Peri Peri and drinks were donated by Honest Tea.  NexGenNow Arlington provided event volunteers.

In addition to food, games and camaraderie, TRC volunteers received new t-shirts pictured below.

TRC staff (and Eileen's son) sporting the new t-shirts
at the Boeing backpack stuffing event this summer.

  
Race for a Cause

JOIN US! TRC is partnering again with Acumen Solutions for its sixth annual Race for a Cause 8K and 1-Mile Fun Run on Sunday, October 19, 2014, in Arlington, Va. TRC is one of 10 charities benefiting from the race, and it's up to the registrant to pick the charity his or her registration will benefit. 

The start/finish line is centrally located in Ballston and is Metro-accessible. 

Our goal is to have 500 participants in this year's race. Sign up today!

The WorldCat World

When looking for Read-Aloud titles, there’s a great big world of books from which to choose. You know what makes a great Read-Aloud book — big, colorful illustrations, memorable characters and words that dance off the page, whether whispered, bellowed, chanted or crooned. 

But how do you get your hands on the actual books?

If you are taking advantage of the suggested titles you find on this blog or in TRC’s Reading Road Maps, it shouldn’t be too difficult to locate a specific book in your local public library. That’s because The Reading Connection staff checks to make sure titles are readily available before recommending them to you!  

This is possible thanks to WorldCat, the world's largest library catalog. Developed and maintained by the nonprofit library cooperative OCLC, WorldCat’s database has more than 2 billion items available in libraries from around the world. Whether you are looking for a book, article, magazine, pamphlet, map, video game, audiobook or eBook, the chances are good that you'll find it in WorldCat — and then be able to find the nearest library that holds it.

Quickly locating a specific title nearby is handy, but there’s much more to WorldCat! You can

 

·       Read a book summary and reviews, including DOGObooks reviews from kids. You can write and add your own reviews, too.

·       Often, you can preview the contents of titles. This could save you a trip to library!

·       Get information about other editions and formats, which is helpful if you want to read the book in another language.

·       Find links to similar items and related subjects. This great feature can help you locate titles appropriate for specific themes. And if you are really interested a topic, it will help you find the books and other information sources that exist on the topic — not just the ones that are available in one library. There are also links to vendors if you want to buy the book.

·       Explore lists of recommended titles created by WorldCat users, including TheReadingConnection.

To take advantage of this free resource, all you need to do is visit the WorldCat website and start browsing. If you decide WorldCat.org is useful, create a free account and a profile and you’ll be able to save searches or create your own lists.

Local public libraries that share their collection databases with WorldCat include Arlington Public Library, Alexandria Library, Fairfax County Public Library, and the Mary Riley Styles Public Library. Several local universities, as well as the Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall Library, also share their library catalogs through WorldCat. (If you are served by public libraries in Washington, DC, or suburban Maryland, you’ll have to rely on their individual online catalogs.)

WorldCat can point you in exciting new directions, lead you to previously unexplored resources and make your world of books bigger and better than ever. Your next great Read-Aloud book could be just a click away!

Guest blog post by TRC Advisory Council member and Belle of the Book, Rachael Walker.

To receive credit for this online training, please fill out the form here.

Maryland program expansion

We are excited to announce a new partnership with the National Center for Children and Families (NCCF) to launch a Read-Aloud program at the Greentree Shelter in Bethesda, Md. In conjunction with our 25th anniversary, we are expanding our programming into a new jurisdiction and a new state. We’re pleased to be able to reach a new population of kids in need.







The Greentree Shelter is located in Bethesda, Md, near the National Institutes of Health and just a few minutes drive from Bethesda's central business district. The shelter has 46 beds for homeless families and serves as a transitional home for homeless families, primarily single mothers and their children. The shelter provides a wealth of support services for its clients including life and financial skills training, education and employment development and child-care services.

The Read-Aloud program at Greentree is held on Tuesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. and kicked off in mid-August, 2014. 

To celebrate our expansion, TRC will be holding a Community Reading Festival in Montgomery County on Saturday, September 13 from 2 to 4 p.m.  The festival will be held at the Ivymount School at 11614 Seven Locks Rd. in Rockville, Md.  

Guest readers, including authors Mary Quattlebaum and Erica Perl and children’s librarian Susan Modak, will share some of their favorite stories with the kids in attendance. The festival will also include crafts for kids and families to complete together, face painting and snacks. The festival is free and open to the public and is geared toward children aged 4 to 8 years old.  If you're planning on attending, please RSVP here.  Please email Stephanie Berman if you are interested in volunteering at the event.

Hello Ocean

Hello Ocean, by Pam Muñoz Ryan, translated by Yanitzia Canetti and illustrated by Mark Astrell, is one of TRC's favorites for reading aloud. The lyric language, rhyming text and rich description of a child's day at the beach engage readers and listeners of all ages. The book's lush and vibrant acrylic illustrations capture the sun, wind and water's movement and strength.

As an ode to a summer day, it is delightful, but as an exploration of the five senses, it is masterful. Ryan moves carefully through each of the senses as the young beach-goer describes her experience.  

Each of the senses is treated to several pages of evocative text and beautiful illustrations, and a concluding section repeats each of the senses, anticipating a return trip to the beach in the future.

The author emphasizes words relating to each sense by using bold font, and includes different forms of the verb for each (see/looks, hear/sounds, touch/feels, smell/smells, taste/tastes), ensuring that kids notice the sense being showcased. You might think that with this framework the language would sound stilted, but it doesn't.  The story and rhyme flow beautifully. 

This aspect of the story, along with rhyme and repetitive structure, helps the reader engage the listeners and builds anticipation about what the girl will experience next. Available in a Spanish/English bilingual format, the book makes this beach trip widely accessible.

When you read Hello Ocean aloud, encourage kids to point to their eyes, ears, hands, noses and mouths as the story works its way through the senses. Ask the kids to brainstorm more words describing the wind, sun, sand, salt water and all things beachy.

Many kids TRC serves may have never been to the beach. You can provide an actual sensory experience by bringing sand and shells to look at and touch (TRC has some in the office for your use), salt water and seaweed for the kids to taste, sunscreen to smell and audio recordings of ocean sound for kids to listen to. Round out the experience with towels and beach balls to play with, or set up a deep sea fishing expedition like this one at a Read-Aloud. 

Whether you are reading books about beaches and oceans, summer adventure or the five senses, Hello Ocean will be a hit with the kids.

To receive credit for this online training, please fill out the form here.

Babies need books — and not just for chewing!

It all begins when you read to your baby.

No baby is too young to benefit from being read to! Faced with a newborn, concepts such as vocabulary and a love of books may seem remote, but even the youngest baby will often calm and seem attentive when she hears the sound of familiar voices reading in a gentle cadence. Studies show that babies in utero calm when the mother slows down and reads aloud to her baby.  

When read to, babies hear and learn words and also build an early interest in books and enjoyment of reading. Reading to babies provides them with the interaction and experience they need to learn about both the sounds that form words and spoken language in general. Numerous studies confirm that reading to infants not only encourages speech and language development, but can also boost overall brainpower.   

Physicians and researchers have known about the value of this experience for decades. The pediatric literacy program Reach Out and Read has been prescribing books and reading to low-income families for more than 20 years. Now, all pediatricians are on board with this practice!

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently announced a new policy recommending that doctors “promote early literacy development as an important evidence-based intervention at health supervision visits for children beginning in infancy and continuing at least until the age of school entry.”

In other words, during well-child visits, medical professionals with training in early literacy development will give parents concrete and age-appropriate advice about books and reading, and prescribe a regular reading schedule at home.  

Here are some favorite titles to help fill that prescription:

Babies love faces! The Baby Faces series of board books by Cartwheel Books (Scholastic) offers titles filled with faces of adorable babies sleeping, eating and smiling. Read the brief rhyming text (available in English or Spanish) or make up your own stories about what these captivating babies are doing. The expressions you make as you share these board books will help your baby learn to communicate.

As babies get older, they will want to handle books beyond putting them in their mouths. Look for titles with tactile appeal and lift-the-flap action like Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt (Random House Children's Books) or Where is Maisy? (A Lift-the-Flap Book) by Lucy Cousins (Candlewick Press).

Books that rhyme and play with words and sounds will entertain and engage both parent and child. Have some silly reading fun with Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) or Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? by Dr. Seuss (Random House Children’s Books).

Just as important as reading is talking and singing with your baby. Like reading, sharing conversation and songs help to increase the number of words kids hear during their earliest years — and helps build social and communication skills. If you’re not sure how to keep conversations going with your infant, brush up on Mother Goose or your favorite show tunes and watch just how much your baby enjoys the attention and the sound of your voice.

Guest blog post by TRC Advisory Council member and Belle of the Book, Rachael Walker.

To receive credit for this online training, please fill out the form here.

TRC Volunteer Central

Welcome to TRC's Volunteer Central! You can find it at https://volunteer.thereadingconnection.org. 

The design of this central volunteer portal has been driven by volunteers' wants and needs. Designed by Pariveda Solutions, TRC Volunteer Central is TRC volunteers' centralized system for interacting with fellow volunteers, viewing schedules, and planning and reporting Read-Alouds. 

The first time you log into the system, click the "Forgot your password?" button, then enter your email and a link to set your password will be sent to you. Create a password that you can remember and use that to log into the system.

All emails from TRC's Volunteer Central will come from VolunteerCentral@thereadingconnection.org. Please add this email address to your list of safe senders.


Rosters and schedules

Once you log in to the system, the following information will be visible on your landing page:

• Names and contact information for your team members and for all of the volunteers at your site,
• Your team’s Read-Aloud schedule, as well as the schedule for your entire site for the next five months,
• Contact information for TRC and Read-Aloud site staff and
• Your volunteer hours for the month and year.

Beside each volunteer's name, both in the team listing and the full site listing, you'll find his or her email and preferred phone number. Below the full list is are buttons to email your entire team and print the roster or schedule. Clicking these links will open a new message in your default email program. The email addresses will be separated by commas. If you use Outlook, you can change the settings to allow it to accept commas separating email addresses.


Beside each Read-Aloud date, you'll find a "Notes" field where you can enter your selected theme or any comments for your teammates and fellow volunteers. There is also a button to cancel a Read-Aloud. If you cancel a Read-Aloud, you will be prompted to select a reason for cancellation.

You can see your team's full Read-Aloud schedule by clicking on the "Read-Alouds" menu and clicking on "Edit Read-Alouds." This will show all Read-Alouds for your team, both past and preset. You can edit the date range to only show future dates. If you'd like to see all Read-Alouds for your site, remove the team letter or number in the search field and click filter.

Submitting a Read-Aloud report

After each Read-Aloud, one volunteer must submit a Read-Aloud report using Volunteer Central within 3 days of their Read-Aloud. This will provide information to other TRC volunteers, TRC staff and site staff about your Read-Aloud.

1. Click the "Submit a Read-Aloud Form" button or select “Submit Read-Aloud” from the Read-Alouds menu.

2. Select your Read-Aloud location from the drop-down list.

3. Select the date of your Read-Aloud. Only Read-Alouds for which a report has not been submitted will appear as options.

4. The form appears with your team members already listed. If a volunteer was absent on the date on which you're reporting, remove him/her for that Read-Aloud by clicking on the “X” next to the volunteer's name. You can add a volunteer's name by typing it into the text area. Volunteers at your site will appear in the "Volunteer Attendance" box, and volunteers from other sites are listed under "Other Attendees."

5. Children attending your site are listed as well. When you click on a child's name, the circle surrounding the name will turn purple indicating that he or she attended the Read-Aloud. 

6. To add a new child to the program, click the “Add New Child” link and fill out the requested information in the pop-up window. If there were multiple new children, click "Save & Close" and you'll be given the opportunity to add another child.

7. Enter your theme into the theme field. If your theme is not listed, create a new theme and fill out the requested information, just as you did for creating new children. The same applies to books and activities. 

8. Fill in the remaining information requested about your Read-Aloud and click “Submit Report.” Your report will automatically be sent to the TRC program manager, Read-Aloud site staff and the other volunteers at your site.

Searching for a Read-Aloud theme

The database contains a bank of themes collected from your Read-Alouds, Reading Road Maps and culled from great Read-Alouds from the past several years. 


To search for a theme for your next Read-Aloud, click the "Find Ideas for an Upcoming Read-Aloud" button, or select “Read-Aloud Themes List” from the Read-Alouds menu.  Themes that have a Reading Road Map are indicated on the second column. When you click on that theme, you'll find a purple Reading Road Map link that will take you to a printable PDF of the information.

You can also search recent Read-Alouds that have been held at your site or at other sites by selecting "Recent Read-Alouds" in the Read-Aloud menu. The system will default to show only your site, but you can select all sites to see  themes from other sites. Selecting the date will bring you to the report summary of that Read-Aloud. Selecting the theme will take you to a compilation of books and activities used with that theme.

Edit Personal Information

You can update your personal information by clicking "View/Edit Personal Information" in the header.

There you can update your password, add your preferred phone numbers and birthday so that we can wish you a happy birthday.


Issues

If you come across any issues with the site, such as inability to access the system, errors updating information or with problems submitting Read-Aloud data, please submit a ticket through our bug submission form and we will get the issue fixed as soon as possible.