“Is this where the party is?” Ethan, my threeyear- old, asked.
“This is the place,” I confirmed. “Let the wild rumpus start.”
I added this line from a favourite book, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, because we were going to an event to celebrate Family Literacy Day and I was delighted that Ethan referred to it as a party. In my mind, anything that centres around books and reading is worthy of a party, but I didn’t know a three-year-old mind thought like that too. Maybe I had tricked him by mentioning that there would be ice cream involved.
Family Literacy Day is recognized on the 27th day of January by ABC Life Literacy Canada to bring awareness to the importance of engaging in literacy-related activities as a family. Falling on a Sunday this year, some Chatham-Kent organizations took creative license to spread out the celebrations during the weeks before and after the official day – all the better to enjoy a variety of activities bringing literacy to the forefront around town. My wife and I were taking Ethan and his one-year-old brother, Jonah, to a few events to see our community’s commitment to the promotion of literacy.
Our first stop was Adult Language and Learning, an organization that caters to adult literacy skills in Chatham-Kent, which opened their doors to its students, their families, and the general public with a host of fun-filled activities. Crowds of children were enjoying Valentine’s Day crafts, cookie-making, a spelling bee, and dancing to music videos in funny costumes. Face painting is always a big draw for kids and one talented employee was busy applying artistic creations across the cheeks of eager participants. There was family-like atmosphere to the evening and it did feel like a party, so Ethan and I were not far off. Then they took it to the next level and made the kids (and some dads) very happy by pulling out ice cream with all the trimmings for sundaes.
The most prominent feature of a literacy celebration is stories themselves. A special story-time was planned with a local author, Bryan Prince, well-known for his ability to weave stories out of history, most specifically with this books about the locally-inspired underground railroad. Story-time was announced and a wave of children filled the room to hear The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. Bryan announced it was one of his favourite short stories and the message relayed to the children was that family in our lives will oftentimes do anything for us even at personal sacrifice.
Our next outing was a few days later to the Chatham Public Library which was drawing in families for the entire week following Family Literacy Day. The main Chatham branch was building on the theme that ABC Life Literacy Canada was propagating to celebrate its 15th anniversary; the theme was “15 Minutes of Fun” to endorse that only 15 minutes a day learning or reading is crucial to a child’s development. Learning can happen at any moment and the library’s activities were intended to exercise young minds under 15 minutes at a time, with things like: a library-themed Scavenger Hunt; an Alphabet Soup game (solving riddles with only the letters from a soup bowl); and writing a People Poem (creating a poem about yourself by using each letter in your first name).
Both my kids are a bit active for the requisite library behaviour. Lowered voices and slow feet were something we had to remind them about continuously. Sitting still for more than 15 minutes happens only when there is an engaging project at hand. One of the crafts – making a paper snake out of ten cut-out construction paper circles – was enough to keep Ethan occupied until completion. When I think back on it, I see what he had in mind, but he was practicing numerical literacy while gluing together the snake, so I didn’t think much about it. But I really don’t like snakes and Ethan knows this. When he finished, he hissed the multi-coloured, paper snake toward me as menacingly as he could.
“I’ll eat you up, I love you so,” he said, while making the snake bite my arm.
I could only smile at the reptilian attack because he was reciting another line from Where the Wild Things Are, reminding me that it has been read so many times that he most likely has the entire book memorized, not just that one line.
Picking a few books to continue our love of literacy at home would be an easy task for a booklover like me with many favourites that I recall from childhood that I could enforce on my kids. But to give them a bit of input to their own reading style, we let the kids have free reign over what they wanted.
Not wise with a 1-year-old who has no regard for tidiness and pulled out anything indiscriminately, but Ethan was more discerning (meaning he picked a colourful cover he liked) and I thought it appropriate that he choose Wild About Books.
Since my boys are only one and three, reading on their own is not in their repertoire yet. We have caught them, however, surrounded by piles of books flipping through the pages while gazing at the pictures and I am confident this is planting seeds for their literacy education to continue on many levels. Their mother and I are certainly corralling them in that direction and the events we attended did a good job of fostering the wild rumpus of literacy during the weeks around Family Literacy Day.
