Getting an Early Jump on Literacy
Few things give children a better start than learning to love to read. This occurs most frequently when children are read to on a daily basis. That is why libraries and schools set aside special story times for children.
In florida, the Miami-Dade Public Library System is helping day care centers teach Dade County's at-risk preschoolers to love to read with "Project Jump Start."
Jump Start provides Head Start and HUD child care workers with library resources and training to conduct on-site, quality story time programs. Jump Start kits are furnished upon request to day care centers. Each kit contains everything needed for children's story time: books, finger plays, a flannel-board story, songs, and a musical cassette. The kits are geared to the 3 to 5 age group with enough variety for daily 20-minute story times. Project Jump Start materials are also available in Spanish and Creole in order to serve the multi-ethnic, multi-language population of Dade County.
The Miami-Dad Public Library System received a grant from OERI under the Library Literacy Program.
In Project Jump Start's first year, it reached more than 3,000 at-risk preschool children from 100 day care centers and trained 569 center staff in the use of the story kit materials.
For information about this Library Literacy Program, call (202) 219-1303 or 1315. For information about Project Jump Start, contact Sylvia Mavrogenes, Youth Services Administrator, Miami-Dade Public Library System, 101 W. Flagler Street, Miami, FL 33130- 1523. (305) 375-4108.