A project of the Flint Hills Resources Community Action Council For more information call 361.884.8890 or write info@earlybirdreader.org |
Helping children succeed in school |
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The Early Bird Reader Program is a unique collaborative effort between our community, schools, parents and students to insure all of our children have the literacy skills required to successfully launch their school career. We looked for a creative way to make sure more and more of South Texas children come to school having hands-on experience with books and reading. Ours is a peer-to-peer program, kids reading to kids. Research indicates that children who enter kindergarten without ever having been exposed to reading or books are so significantly behind children who have had that experience that their chances of ever catching up with their peers and expected standards are very slight. To address this concern before children start school, the Flint Hills Resources Community Action Council (FHRCAC) developed this program by engaging and equipping preschooler's older siblings. School librarians teach these students how to read to pre-K younger ones at home as well as providing them with age-appropriate books for their home library. Most of the books for the program are donated by the public to recycle these needed books into the hands (and minds) that most need them. |
The 2014 KIII Early Bird Reader
Book Drive is Friday, March 28!
Our program has almost doubled this year and we have a huge demand for baby and pre-K books (for ages 0-5 years).
We'll distribute your books to our student readers in locally participating schools and their siblings at home who are participating in our early literacy program.
So start gathering your like new baby/pre-K books now and plan to bring them to the KIII studios anytime between 5AM and 6:30PM on March 28. Or challenge your friends, church, or group to a mini-book drive in March and make arrangements to bring all of your books together when we can celebrate your donatins on-air. Just email us at info@earlybirdreader.org.
And you can still donate - all year long, at your convenience - by dropping off your books at public libraries in Corpus Christi and Portland.
Don't have books at home? Make a donation and we'll use it to buy books - we have great connections to purchase books at discounted prices.
Early Bird Reader In the News!
2013 Book Drive Interview KIII-TV: Ending Illiteracy - March 13, 2013
Early Bird Reader Book Drive Aims to End Literacy, KIII - TV - March 4, 2013
Corpus Christi Caller-Times - March 3, 2009
Corpus Christi Caller-Times - March 6, 2003
EDITORIAL: Give a bouquet of ROSES to the Flint Hills Resources Community Action Council and the city's public libraries, who kicked off the third consecutive year of the Early Bird Reader Program, an important initiative in a city with an almost 30 percent illiteracy rate.
