Albert Lea Early Childhood Family Education was one of 29 organizations to receive donated books through Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation’s BookStart program, a partnership between SMIF and Capstone Publishers.

This effort is part of SMIF’s Early Childhood Initiative, focused on providing resources so all children can have a healthy life of learning, achieving, and succeeding.

BookStart, now in its seventh year, has provided nearly 30,000 books. The goal is that every child has a book of his or her own at home to read or be read to by family members, which promotes a life-long love for reading.

“We are pleased to be able to partner with Capstone Publishers to provide these books to promote early literacy and learning for our young children,” said SMIF President and CEO Tim Penny. “We believe investing in our young children is a long-term strategy that will lead to a capable workforce.”

ECFE was selected to receive 235 books valued at $4,218 because it provides early literacy opportunities for young children and their families within the Albert Lea Area Schools. ECFE incorporated the books in their fall programming by having the parent groups complete a home literacy environment checklist that helped parents review their home and how conducive it was to promoting early literacy skills. Each family then selected a book to take home with them. In the preschool classes, children selected the book that they wanted and then participated in an activity addressing where, when and who could read to them at home. Each child was then asked to complete a brief “book report” to share their who, when and where information with classmates in small group discussions.

Each child enrolled in either the ECFE or Building Block Preschool Programs was given a book. Children were thrilled to take home a brand new hard cover book to share with their family.

To find out more about this project and many other family learning opportunities, contact ECFE at 379-4838 or look on the Web at http://albertlea.k12.mn.us.comlink to early childhood.