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Parents are the first and most important teachers in their children's lives. Learning begins when babies are born, and reading to babies is essential.
By providing moms of newborn babies with these multi-lingual educational literacy tools, they will be able to engage with their babies in lively and constant verbal interactions. Reading to your baby promotes vocabulary development and comprehension; both are critical predictors of reading achievement. Only 45% of our community's third graders are reading proficiently at grade level. Parents can use these English/Spanish interactive books to begin their baby's reading-readiness process.
Buena Park is a diverse community - a variety of languages spoken, income levels represented, and ethnic backgrounds of residents. Both Buena Park and Centralia School Districts have families who send their children to kindergarten with reading skills that are below those of their peers. Children who are not reading proficiently by the third grade level will never read as fluently as their peers.
Five Committee members plus all currently active members of the Buena Park Rotary Club will be participating in this project, together with Rotaractors from the North Orange County Community Rotaract Club, Interactors from two high schools, and other community members.
We will partner with these groups:
1. Acacia Quilt Guild (making bags) 2. St. Jude Hospital* 3. Centralia School District** 4. Buena Park School District** 5. La Palma Inter-Community Hospital* 6. Buena Park Library** 7. OC Moms* (*- Distribution; **- Informational Literature)
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