Family Literacy Week makes for a good read to develop literacy, life skills

Photo: Submitted

The Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy serves 77 communities across the Columbia Basin and Boundary region.

It looks like a small container of grass — but suggest to a preschooler that they draw eyes and a smile on the side of the pot and suddenly they’ve got a silly head growing “hair.”

This is one of the Earth-friendly activities that kids throughout the province of British Columbia are being encouraged to try during Family Literacy Week, held Jan. 26 to Feb. 2 under the theme “Learn to Be Green, Together.”

Parents and caregivers can help their children develop literacy and life skills with simple, fun activities like this. And what does growing a tub of grass have to do with literacy for children?

Growing a tub of grass can teach children much more than gardening — it connects directly to literacy development.

As children engage in this activity, they are learning how to grow their own food while simultaneously developing crucial literacy and communication skills.

“They’re communicating, they’re reading instructions, they’re measuring and estimating,” said Chrisy Hill, who was responsible for pulling together this activity as the literacy outreach coordinator with Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy (CBAL).

“Family literacy is what you learn naturally in your own home. It’s parents reading with their kids. It’s families having a meal together and discussing their day at the dinner table. It’s being able to understand each other,” she said.

Hill also emphasized that “literacy doesn’t happen in isolation” — which is why CBAL is committed to helping people of all ages throughout the Columbia Basin and Boundary region meet their lifelong literacy learning needs. CBAL is established in the Basin with 16 coordinators working in 77 communities. Columbia Basin Trust partners with CBAL to help Basin communities address literacy issues.

Photo: Contributed

Great Big Buddy Read

Cathryn Lennox and her son have attended a range of CBAL programs, like Love 2 Learn and Block Builders.

“The programs have provided me with a way to connect my son to the joy of reading and the opportunities reading and writing can provide,” she said. For example, “He won a CBAL writing contest and it gave him a sense that creating stories can be fun—not just a school task.”

The Great Big Buddy Read is one of the Family Literacy Week programs that her son participates in. This annual one-day event sees students across the province pair up to read with other students, usually older ones.

Lennox says that her son, currently 13 years old, is now “crossing into being the older reading buddy for younger children, and it is incredible to see those skills being shared with others.”

Not only are all CBAL activities free, but many of the in-person programs send parents home with the supplies and resources they need to continue the enjoyment at home.