It took all school year but we got it done! We are happy to announce the establishment of Colleen’s Corners in all 125 Early Childhood classrooms in Passaic, NJ! Each Corner contained 6-7 books, and a Colleen’s Corner branded book container. Big thanks to everyone who made this possible. We’re excited to continually provide Passaic Early Childhood Department with great new books, while also exploring additional locations for Colleen’s Corner…
Colleen’s Corner is off to a great start Colleen would be so happy! We’ve kicked off our first year of Colleen’s Corner with much success—from our fundraiser brunch, to grants that have provided books for our corners. Most recently, we were thrilled to learn we’d been awarded 2 grants! The first was from our new friends at The Lisa Libraries in Kingston NY. They were kind enough to gift us with 400+beautiful books, straight from the publishers. We feel grateful and honored to have begun a relationship with The Lisa Libraries. We share a bond based on the fact that their creation and goal were also founded in memory of a special person who was dedicated to children’s literacy, Lisa Novak, a children’s book editor. The Lisa Libraries organization was founded by Ann M. Martin, the amazing author of many books for…
Source: NY Times Since it’s back-to-school season across the country, I wanted to celebrate a group that is often maligned: teachers. Like so many others, it was a teacher who changed the direction of my life, and to whom I’m forever indebted. A Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll released this week found that 76 percent of Americans believed that high-achieving high school students should later be recruited to become teachers, and 67 percent of respondents said that they would like to have a child of their own take up teaching in the public schools as a career. But how do we expect to entice the best and brightest to become teachers when we keep tearing the profession down? We take the people who so desperately want to make a difference that they enter a field where they know that they’ll be overworked and underpaid…
We are excited and honored to announce our new editors-in-chief of ColleensCorner.net! Barbara Díaz and Karen Dube Calise have graciously accepted our invitation to be apart of Colleen’s Corner. Barbara and Karen bring decades of experience and passion in child development, child psychology, curriculum development and innovation. As editors in chief, they will oversee our Teacher Advocacy Program, which empowers teachers to publish their knowledge and learnings on current/relative topics. Our goal is to bridge the gap between teachers and parents and allow teachers to educate parents on how to inspire reading comprehension and educational success outside the classroom. As we continue to grow Colleen’s Corner, we knew our online voice and presence was just as important as the materials and assets we provide to classroom corners. We also knew that we needed to increase our credibility within the community, and educational systems…
Source: IFL Science Elon Musk is revolutionizing space travel, electric cars, solar power, and even tunnels these days. But you probably didn’t know he’s funding a project to help children in Tanzania read and write to the tune of $15 million. It’s called the Global Learning XPRIZE, the latest attempt from the XPRIZE Foundation to revolutionize a new area of the world. They’ve tackled space planes and tricorders in the past, and are currently also running a race to the Moon. This time around, the project is a much more humanitarian effort. The goal is to find a way to teach illiterate children to read, write, and do math by themselves. Globally, about 260 million children do not have access to primary or secondary education. This project aims to address that. In Tanzania, children from 150 villages will be given one of 8,000 Pixel C…
Get all your favorite children’s books read aloud on this great Colleen’s Corner Approved YouTube Channel! Children books are read aloud and updated regularly on The Storybook Nanny’s YouTube page. Check out the entire library of children’s books here Enjoy…
Source: NY Times From the moment you’re expecting your first child, you are bombarded with messages about the importance of reading. For good reason: The benefits of reading at every stage of a child’s development are well documented. Happily, raising a reader is fun, rewarding and relatively easy. Start Them Early FIRST, REACQUAINT YOURSELF WITH READING If you’ve let reading slide to the margins of your life, now is the time to bring it back. Make the space, and time, for books you read for yourself, and books you read with your child. If you want to raise a reader, be a reader. BABY BOOKS ARE A NECESSITY You may think you’re off the hook with books until your baby is at least vertical, but not so. Even newborns benefit from the experience of hearing stories (and they can’t complain about your taste in books…
Source: New York Daily News A bedtime story’s goal isn’t just a good night’s sleep. New research from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that reading books with a child beginning in infancy can boost vocabulary and reading skills four years later – before they even start elementary school. High-quality reading in infancy lead to early reading skills years later, and high-quantity storytime in toddlerhood showed strong ties to literacy skills, like name writing, as early as age four. “These findings are exciting because they suggest that reading to young children, beginning even in early infancy, has a lasting effect on language, literacy and early reading skills,” said lead author Carolyn Cates. The “quantity” of shared reading time was determined by the number of books in the home and days per week spent reading together. The “quality” of this shared time was gauged by whether parents…
On a day like Mother’s Day, I feel it appropriate to give my testimony about Colleen’s Corner. Your mother passes away on a day just like today. No warning, no plan, no goodbye. The hardest of prayers go unanswered, and you realize the nightmare is a reality. The time passes and your mind tries to cope with the new day. The day when your Mom is now the memories of the past and the belief system in which you subscribe. My Mom was unwavering in her approach to life and maintained a positive outlook. She had an undeniable ability to make you look at the world in a way where dreams were attainable and every moment of life was precious. She was beautiful inside and out, loving, caring, fun, full of life, a great listener, compassionate, understanding, and all around great time to be around. She afforded my…