Oaky the Acorn was greeted with shrieks of excitement and tears of fright when the Read to Rise mascot visited 3Bears Educare in Portland last week.
The mascot and the rest of the team from the literacy non-profit visited the educare to launch their first wordless story book designed for preschool children on Friday 20 February.
The NPO donated a mini-library and enough copies of the new book, Oaky Bakes a Cake, for each child to take one home, all of which was sponsored by the Tshikululu Trust.
Interactive story-telling
Read to Rise’s Roscoe Williams encouraged children to tell the story to their families at home after he held an interactive story-telling session with the educare’s children.
“We plan to visit twice,” Williams said, adding that a second educare-geared book is in the pipeline, which will build on the first story and include a few words.
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“We’ve always said that learning to read starts as young as two,” Williams said.
“And there’s been an appeal for help from ECD (early childhood development).”
He added the hope was that with all the early intervention children would be able to read better when they reach the intermediate phase of education.
Williams added that his brother, Athol Williams, who has written all the Oaky books bases the stories on themes that are rooted in learners’ real experiences, such as bullying. “Teachers say at schools, these are the challenges that are happening every day,” he said. “And we are writing about it.”
Educare feedback
3Bears centre manager Colleen Isaacs said she was happy with the visit saying to Williams: “I was wondering when you were going to tap into ECD.”
She advised him to include the names of the well-known household items in the books, such as on the recipe page of the newest book because: “That’s the words they recognise and learn.”
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Williams said he appreciated the feedback for the rest of the books that would be developed for preschool children.
He said Read to Rise would be distributing 1 000 copies of Oaky Bakes a Cake and 20 mini-libraries to educares.
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