Family Literacy Day promotes fun, learning
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To mark Family Literacy Day’s 15th year, ABC Life Literacy Canada is encouraging families to share “15 Minutes of Fun” learning together on a daily basis.
Family Literacy Day is a national awareness initiative created by ABC Life Literacy Canada in 1999, and held annually on January 27 each year to help raise awareness of the importance of reading and engaging in other literacy –related activities as a family.
“The focus is to bring attention to the importance of reading and for people to become aware of how reading is important in their lives,” said Wendy Woodhouse, Adult Literacy & Essential Skills program coordinator with the Multi-Service Centre. “This year, they have a theme of “15 minutes of fun”. It really indicates to take 15 minutes a day to learn with your family - the introduction of reading and writing within a family, even with a toddler, is so important.”
Taking time every day to read or do a learning activity with children is crucial to a child’s development. There are several enjoyable activities that families can do to improve reading, writing and overall literacy learning. Some of those activities include: creating your own comic strip about your family, playing a board game together, creating your family tree, finding15 things that begin with a particular letter, or making a new recipe together.
“We look at promoting it among families and the community,” said Woodhouse. “We provide materials for instance, for early years, and the materials we have here provide tips for families in how to incorporate literacy as fun activities within the home. The encouragement is for families to embrace that and make literacy alive within a family environment.”
The Adult Literacy & Essential Skills program at the Multi-Service Centre is a success noted Woodhouse, because of the many volunteers who dedicate their time to helping others learn to read and write.
“We assist adults, in helping them upgrade and with reading, writing, spelling and basic literacy skills. One of the ways we do that is we recruit and train volunteers to become volunteer tutors in our program,” she added. “We will be having a two-day training session coming up on February 23 and March 2, 2013.
“We have been really grateful that a lot of community members have come forward and they’ve volunteered with the program. We presently have 53 volunteers that tutor.”
Developing and improving literacy skills can play and important role for both families and individuals and overall, has a positive impact in people’s lives.
“Once you have literacy skills, you can build on that,” said Woodhouse. “Opportunities are open to you.”
If you would like to become a volunteer tutor at the Multi-Service Centre, or attend an upcoming tutor-training session, call (519) 842-9000 ext. 266