The Big Reading Challenge at Children 1st @ Bilborough

The children and staff were delighted to share their story time with Councillor David Mellen, leader of Nottingham City Council and portfolio holder for Early Years and Early Education.

Cllr. Mellen has taken on the Big Reading Challenge, which sees him attempting to read a story book to 5000 children within 50 days to raise £5000 to buy more books for Nottingham children. This means he needs to find 5000 children who love listening to stories and, as we are hooked on books at Bilborough, we jumped at the chance to invite him in to have a good read.

The challenge of  raising  funds for books forms part of  the Imagination Library, an amazing scheme which delivers a FREE book every month to children between 0 and 5 years of age. The Imagination Library is an international book gifting programme for young children. The brain child of legendary singing star, Dolly Parton, the Imagination Library spans 5 countries and gifts over 1.5 million books a month to children around the world.

The scheme helps parents and children to enjoy exploring books together – looking at the pictures, talking about the stories and just having fun. This is proven to raise children’s literacy levels. By receiving these books our children in Nottingham are more likely to be ready to start school and this gives them a real head start in life.

As a former Headteacher, encouraging children to read is a cause close to Cllr. Mellen’s heart and we loved hearing him read two beautiful stories, ‘The Storm Whale’ by Benjii Davies and ‘Oh No George’ by Chris Haughton.

Of course, reading and developing language skills is a key part of our activities at Bilborough. Every day the children are encouraged to access books independently and to share books in small groups. We have a specific book we focus on in detail every month using it as a stimulus for  activities across the early years foundation stage.

Thank-you to Cllr. Mellen for coming to share his love of books with the children. He has until 18 March to complete his Big Reading Challenge and we wish him every success in raising £5000.

Anyone interested in registering for the scheme is invited to contact the City Council as follows:

Nottingham City Council, Loxley House, Station Street,

NG2 3NG,

NOTTINGHAM

Contact: Paula Harrison

Phone: 01158764692

Email: paula.harrison@nottinghamcity.gov.uk

We hope you enjoy looking at our gallery showing the children engaging with books in different ways at nursery.