With our 25 new NYC day care partners completing the first full week of 2015, we are excited to connect them to free books and vocabulary building resources! As we provide much needed resources to these free and subsidized day cares, we are grateful for all of your support! Share this week’s email to raise awareness or download our fundraising toolkit for fun ways and upcoming dates to support our “Words Have Power” campaign.
SPREAD THE WORD
Raise awareness about the word gap:
85% of current jobs and 90% of new jobs require some or more college or post-secondary education. The simplest and most effective way to prepare more students for college is to prepare them for preschool.
Use your words to make education equality a reality: www.wordrebel.org
WORD OF THE WEEK
Build your own vocabulary with these uncommon words:
MELIORISM: The belief that the world gets better; the belief that humans can improve the world.
WORDS HAVE POWER
Some quotes to live by…courtesy of Hafiz:
“And still after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the sky.”
“We have not come into this exquisite world to hold ourselves hostage from love. Run my dear from anything that may not strengthen your precious budding wings. We have not come here to take prisoners or to confine our wondrous spirits, but to experience ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom and light…the only possible reason for this bizarre and spectacular existence. Go running through the streets creating divine chaos. Go running through this world giving love.”
“When all your desires are distilled. You will cast just two votes: To love more and be happy.”
ACTIVITY UPDATE
With the Words Have Power Campaign under way, Word Rebel is excited to have started 2015 with 25 new day care partners in East New York, Harlem and Brooklyn! We are excited to share that our following day care partnerships are part of city-wide and even nation wide networks:
– Boys and Girls Harbor
– Association to Benefit Children
– Episcopal Social Services
– Children’s Aid Society
– PAL: Police Athletic League
– YWCA
PARTNER SPOTLIGHT
I had the honor to meet Ms. Singleton, our newest partner from PAL Carey Gardens in Coney Island. Ms. Singleton is the parent that we hope all parents can be. She embodies the values and practices at the foundation of Word Rebel’s mission. Here is her story:
“Even before my daughter was born, when I was pregnant, I’d read to her. After she was born, we always read. By a year old, she could count to 100, recite the alphabet, our telephone number and address. When she was older, I’d worry when she’d walk down the street with her head in a book. School came easily and she graduated high school with an Advanced Honors Diploma. She received multiple national and state scholarships so that we did not have to pay for her to attend Baruch College where she also graduated with Honors. Now I buy her children so many books that she told me to stop; They don’t have room for more…
…When I was growing up, I wasn’t encouraged to read. I read the only book I could get my hands on, the Bible. That motivated me to encourage my children to read. I was a young mom, working and putting myself back in school. I went back to school again and again to get my degrees. I put those degrees all together on a wall. One day I found my daughter standing in that room and she told me I was her idol. That made me cry. I never knew…”
We, at Word Rebel, say that our mission is to fight the word deficit between low and high income preschoolers to close the achievement gap before it starts. Our true mission is to empower every single parent to be like Ms. Singleton, and to give every single child the opportunities she gave her daughter.
DONATE books directly to Ms. Singleton’s day care!
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PARENT CORNER
SUBSCRIBE to receive one free downloadable book a week.
READ”THE HOUSE AT POO CORNER” for FREE in a corner of your local bookstore or library
READ “THE SNOWY DAY” for FREE online (simply sign up for wegivebooks.org).
BUILD VOCABULARY: Use bath time as a time to build vocabulary. Point out words on the shampoo bottles. Ask them questions about their surroundings (curtain, tile, bubbles, suds, drain, droplets, luke warm, scalding hot, etc.)
TEACH ONE THOUSAND WORDS because preschoolers who know 1,000 words are on track for long-term success: BELL, BEND, BENT, BEST, BETTER, BAN, BAT, BAY, BOSS
READ FOR A PURPOSE: Ask the questions (common-core aligned) teachers will ask, “What is the most important event that happens in the story? Why is this important? How do you know?”
Fight The Word Gap 