{Big Help} Book Donation

Last week, I told you about how I was collecting children’s books to donate as part of a Champions For Kids SIMPLE Service Project: Nickelodeon Big Help Book Drive. I am excited to report that I was able to donate 107 books!! YAY! Here are the cupcakes I made to give to those who donated books. I made the cupcake toppers using old book pages with a simple “Thanks!” on top. For the frosting, I decided to try making Swiss meringue buttercream. I am delighted with how everything turned out!

A little over a week ago, I went shopping with Vanessa to buy some new books to add to the donation. Although we were unable to find the new Dora the Gymnast book, we were able to find this fun Dora’s Fantastic Gymnastics Event.

We purchased 6 Nickelodeon books from Walmart including 4 Dora the Explorer books. Four additional Nickelodeon books were donated. You can see more about our shopping trip in my Google+ album.

Here are the stacks of donated books. It doesn’t look like that many but between the books in the previous photo and the ones stacked here there are 107 books! The books range from board books, to American Girl books, to Barbie books, to non-fiction books. I spotted Amelia Bedelia, Clifford, Thomas the Tank Engine, Little Critter and Arthur. There are books about Christmas, karate and colors. These books are going to appeal to a wide range of children and that is a fantastic thing! One of the best way to get kids interested in books is to find books that they are interested in. Vanessa and Zack went through a long phase of reading only non-fiction books. They said they didn’t like it when turtles could talk or buses had faces in fiction books. If I would’ve tried to make them get fiction books, it wouldn’t have gone well. Instead we scoured the libraries for books about dogs, cats, lizards, sharks, tornadoes, science, how things works, etc. One of the libraries we frequented had a fairly large section of non-fiction books for kids but we also found a lot of books in the adult non-fiction section.

I did a little research and found that fourth grade children Minnesota are doing better than the national public on their reading but those number are dropping! I really wanted to keep the book donation in our community. I live in a small town so the kids that I am helping out are the kids in my neighborhood and the kids that my kids go to school with. We love reading and to be able to share that with others is a gift!

We brought our donation to the community education building for our district. Before dropping off the books, I called to make sure that a donation would be acceptable. They were delighted to have a donation of books. The woman I spoke to said there are many different locations that will benefit from the donation. They plan to spread the books out to as many places as they can from preschool, to before/after school care and to the elementary school!

How are the children in your community doing with reading? Look around your home to see what books aren’t being used! The next time you are out shopping, pick up a book from the store. Donate as many books as you can to help our children have bright futures! They need to know how to read to be successful in school and in their lives and together we can make a difference! Once you’ve made a donation, stop by the Champion For Kids website and fill out a brief form telling them about your donation. Your donation report will help Champions For Kids reach their goal to mobilize 20 million people by 2020!

#NickCFK
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