This summer 2023, five summer area camp organizations: Better Family Life, Gene Slay's Girls & Boys Club, Unleashing Potential, Wesley House, and the Gateway Region YMCA,  at 10 locations, infused an an hour of literacy a day for their campers, ages five to ten. The focus was for campers to have fun with reading!  Each day included 15 minutes of reading aloud, 15 minutes of independent reading, 15 minutes of writing, and 15 minutes of literacy games. 

 

Thanks to area contributors and funders BJC, Book Harvest, the Dana Brown Charitable Trust, Clark-Fox Foundation, Emerson, Incarnate Word Foundation, Nine PBS, Saigh Foundation, and Light a Single Candle Foundation, each camp counselor received on-site training, and a literacy kit (co-designed by the area camp programs, Turn the Page STL, and Blueprint4.)  The 70 kits included more than a hundred high-interest, culturally representative books, literacy games, notebooks, pencils, chalk, and a binder of local literacy resources.   Campers were pre-assessed and post assessed in their literacy skills.  In addition, at the beginning of summer camp, each site hosted a Family Book-A-Palooza where families could pick out free books for home and get a public library card.

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