Congratulations to Bela Babes for winning our April 'International Children's Book Day' Calendar Competition!

We would also like to thank all the other entries!

Bela Babes Brings Awareness to Books through their Bela Library.

During early March our quest to bring awareness to Books begun. We felt that celebrating our love for reading could not be sufficed in one day and so in preparation for April third’s international Children’s book Day we spent time working out ways to encourage the children’s love of books, as well as the educators in our service. One day, one of the children bought in a book from home to share, and thus our Library was born.

The educators worked together to collect books around the centre to enter our library, it was to be a community library were the educators spent time encouraging families to Take a book and Share a book. We created a check in and out register where our families note down the books they have borrowed and the books they have left for us. We spend time reading the books during the week with the children, or the children will sit and reflect in our Bela Library as they look at the photos on the wall of themselves reading as well as reading the books from the library, be it their own, ones from their peers or from the centre, we love to look at the photos of the children reading our Bela Books at home with their families.

Some of the educators even checked in and out their own books to share with their children and family at home. Our parents were also encouraged to come in and read us the stories that they checked in over the course of the week from the 2nd- 6th April. This gave the children a sense of belonging to be a part of something that extended from their home into their learning environment and vice versa.

A range of skills were extended from this, from caring for our books, as they learnt to place them back onto the shelves, but also sharing and turn taking when it came to reading the books. This has now become imbedded in our service. Our photos depict when we first established our Bela Library and how much we have added to it since we started it a month ago, this is a great place for us to meet over our mutual love of reading.

ACA NSW loves this project and we are thrilled to have awarded Bela Babes a book gift pack from Bellbird!

Plan your submission by checking our Calendar Competition Categories for the rest of 2018.