Dear Friends!
The Orava Association for Democratic Education
is pleased to invite you for the fifth time to celebrate the
Read Aloud Week
which will take place from April 2 – 8, 2006
(or any other April week).

The main goal of this event is to support communication between the world of adults and children through books and stories. We invite all parents, teachers, grandparents, siblings and other adults to join in this event and to help children discover the world of literature and classical tales hiding a lot of joy and new learning. We already look forward to receiving the colorful plans and to reading reactions of children to individual questions. We hope you will have many nice moments during this year’s Read Aloud Week!

After record number of participating children in Slovakia last year (approximately 7000) we prepared a new game also for this year when we would like to remember classical fairy tales. Again this year we cooperated with Danka Facunova from Dolny Kubin, Slovakia who drew the game With Book to the Fairyland for younger children. We intentionally chose characters from classical fairy tales for our game. Children will collect rose petals – letters for each task solved.

How to get involved?

Copy the plan with the Fairyland and hand it out to children to take home to their parents or other adults who would be reading aloud to them during one whole week in April. During this game children will be meeting various characters from classical tales and after fulfilling the individual tasks they will receive eleven petals (letters), that will help them disclose the Secret of the Tower (answer to the question: “Who enchanted Sleeping Beauty?” “Enchantress”) . For each question answered the child receives one or two letters. The plan is designed into seven parts representing seven days. Each day when someone reads aloud to the child for at least 10 - 15 minutes, the child colors one part of the fairy tale journey and answers one task. The goal of the game is to respond to all seven questions and collect all the letters that make, when combined correctly, the Secret of the Tower.

For older children and students we prepared also this year the game Make your Bookmark! Classroom that decides to join in this event should first choose together a book that they will read for the duration of one week. Volunteers can take turns reading. It is good to divide the story equally for each day in the week and to give opportunity to students to think and discuss about what they heard. The task of the students is to make, draw and decorate their own bookmarks. Each student will create his or her own bookmark in which they will depict parts and situations important for them in the story. They can choose their favorite medium such as: tiny pressed flowers, marbling, crayons or marking pens, picture cutouts from book reviews or magazines, a handwritten poem, rubber stamps, stickers, etc. If it is possible, let the children laminate their bookmarks or let the children insert a tassel or piece of ribbon between the contact to hang down from the bookmark.

If you have your own idea about how to celebrate the Read Aloud Week, great! Let us please know your ideas, events you organized and reactions of your students, children, parents, etc.

At the end of the Read Aloud Week you can ask students to bring the plans and pictures back to school where you can award them with the Certificate of participation in the Read Aloud Week that you can copy on a color paper.

We look forward to hearing your reactions, experiences and ideas!

We wish you many interesting stories read and discussed!