President's Column
By President Joyce Mak
Bring Me A Book
It's time to give you an update on our Bring Me A Book Project. Our stage two of the project was successfully held and thanks to Ms. Julie Fowlkes who is a reading specialist from Bring Me A Book US and has been teaching the First Teacher class for three years to hundreds of parents. She came to HK in early December and we as volunteers had the opportunity to learn about the tips in reading aloud to children.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to all the Rotarians and their spouse, Rotaractors and Interactors who spent their precious time for the two-day session - both Julie and I were very impressed with your participation, dedication and enthusiasm. The sessions were both informative and interactive. Julie presented and built an understanding of the importance of reading aloud to children at an early stage on a daily basis. It is also important to bond with the children by talking, singing, and reading to stimulate their brains. By reading to kids for at least 20 minutes a day help the children's emotional and intellectual development, and prepare them to learn to read more easily. Julie had also demonstrated different ways in getting children's attention before we actually started to learn how to read the story books.
During the class, the question of whether we should be reading to children for more than one language came up many times. Julie described that there is actually no absolute right or wrong, but most of the parents seem to agree that it is wise to read the entire book in one language, if possible. They seemed to feel it was less confusing for the child when the whole book is read in the same language.
We also discussed the fact that children may have several different people reading to them with different accents. Julie encouraged that anyone at home could read aloud to children and no one should worry about accents or less capable readers. All reading aloud is good if it is fun, conversational and personal for the child. Most of us (non-parents) would agree that by sharing the personal experiences from Dora, Rosa and Brenda was also one of the highlights of the session.
On the second day of the session, we all had the opportunity to practice reading storybooks in pairs. I think that was the fun part as I believe members have not seen Ted and Dora reading a story book to Stephen and Huey Jing! I was amazed by the Interactors from Ho Tung Secondary Schools as they did a great job in putting a lot of creative ideas in reading story books. All in all, we enjoyed the sessions and hope we could really apply the techniques in reading to children at the beneficiaries we agreed to serve.
Earlier, our club confirmed in donating a bookcase library to two respective nurseries and today, CP John, PP Edward and I had a ribbon-cutting ceremony at one of the nurseries. We were greeted by the principal, teachers and the children ranging from 2-6 years old. After the ribbon-cutting part, a representative from Bring Me A Book took one of the books from the bookshelf and start reading to the children. They all sat on the floor and got so excited to hear about the story of a dinosaur. Throughout the storytelling process, the children were actively participated in guessing the story plot, answering all the questions being asked and lastly hoping to listen to another story book.
By the time we thought the ceremony was almost finished, Principal told us that the children were going to perform a dance for us! By raising their hands, twisting their bodies, shaking their heads; they followed the rhythm and rested on the right beats. Three of us could not explain how excited and amazed by their great performance. We will be going for another library installation at another nursery soon and we are looking forward to visiting another group of children who are in need to access good quality reading books. We wish the success to our third stage of the project in brining the awareness to the parents the importance of reading aloud to children. I wish to see you all at the nurseries!
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