You may know that Start with a Book is the companion website to WETA’s award-winning literacy initiative Reading Rockets and offers parents, educators, librarians, and youth programs amazing online tools to help keep children learning when school is out. But did you know that Start with a Book is also an on-the-ground learning project, keeping young children in the Washington, D.C. area reading, writing, exploring, and creating during the summer?
Working closely with summer youth programs and other organizations committed to serving children, the team at Reading Rockets and Start with a Book have trained more than a hundred program leaders from community-based organizations in the metro DC area and provided books and materials for thousands of children to have fun reading and learning during the summer months.
One of the organizations participating this summer is United Community Sacramento Neighborhood Center in Alexandria, Virginia. At this neighborhood hub, children and youth are engaged in community programming and social and educational activities in a safe out-of-school environment. Dalton Ebanks, the manager at United Community Sacramento Neighborhood Center, is here to share how Start with a Book and Bug Buddies fit into their learning opportunities for kids this summer and helped kids catch the reading bug!
— Rachael Walker, Reading Rockets’ Book Life
Building Nature Knowledge with Bug Buddies by Dalton Ebanks
When I started the planning of our summer programming, my first task was to go over the programs we used in the past and decide whether or not to implement them again this summer. I came across Start with a Book and instantly knew it would be a vital addition to our summer plans.
Because we wanted to give our students the chance to experience a variety of things, the overall theme of our camp is “The Summer of Discovery.” Students go on a field trip every week which also gives us the opportunity for a focused weekly theme centered around their planned trip. During Week 2 of camp, we went to Hal and Berni Hanson Regional Park, so it was the perfect time for our “Nature and Wildlife” themed week.
The students spent the week learning about different aspects of nature and BUGS!
Through the books, activities, and videos included in Start with a Book’s Bug Buddies program, our students got a chance to dive deep into all things bugs which helped them make sense of and connect with the insects they discovered on our nature walk. Thanks to Bug Buddies, everyone was engaged and our students walked away from the program with newfound knowledge and curiosity for bugs. We even had some of our older kids read books to the younger kids in small groups.
Start with a Book and Bug Buddies really helped us supplement our curriculum and I can't wait to implement it again next summer!
Resources
- Start with a Book: Bug Buddies
- Start with a Book: Bugs
- Start with a Book: Nature: Our Green World
- Start with a Book: Washington DC for Kids: Places to Go
