Turning the Page didn’t miss a beat providing engaging resources to families to start off 2021. Our first Family Room event of the new year with DC’s newest museum, Planet Word, was a hit! Throughout January we continued to distribute books to families in our communities and provide resources for at-home learning.
Family Room Event
We were thrilled to welcome Caitlin Miller, Manager of Education Programs at Planet Word, for a language-centric workshop. During the “Go Bananas for Idioms” Virtual Field Trip we learned about literal and non-literal meanings of words through creative and funny idioms, and caught an inside peek into the museum. Families played a game matching idioms to their meanings and drew their own literal representations of idioms.
The program reminded both students and adults alike that the expressions we use can be tricky to understand, and even silly. We explored how idioms are used throughout diverse languages, and can make our words more expressive – but can also exclude those who aren’t familiar with their meanings! At the end of the workshop, students had a chance to showcase their own humor and play on words. We certainly ended the first Family Room event of the year laughing and ready to practice using a lot of new expressions.
Book Distributions
As always, Turning the Page remains committed to providing students with valuable educational resources despite the challenges of Covid-19. Every month TTP has delivered new, high quality books to families in DC and Chicago to expand at-home libraries and get books in the hands of eager readers! In DC, we were grateful to continue our partnership with Planet Word to distribute 322 books to 80 students and their families in January. Turning the Page also delivered over 500 books to schools and partner organizations. We are particularly grateful to work with the organization Little Lights and providing books to families they work with – this partnership was supported in part by the Capitol Hill Community Foundation.
In Chicago, the TTP team delivered 584 books to 247 students. That’s a lot of reading material! Parents across both cities shared that their children love the books. Teachers, parents and students agreed that some of their favorite titles from January’s book distribution included Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime adapted for young readers and Becoming Muhammad Ali by Kwame Alexander and James Patterson. Check out another crowd favorite from our January book distribution, Bilal Cooks Daal, in a read aloud with TTP staff!
We are all looking forward to many more successful book distributions to come in 2021, to give families the resources to read together and engage in at-home learning — no matter what type of classroom they might learn in this year!
