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Dear Friends of Ready Ready,
With Memorial Day behind us, we consider summer underway. Even though summer doesn’t officially start until June 20, many of our daily routines change with children out of school.
One routine that shouldn’t change? Encouraging reading with children of all ages.
Taking a break from academics during the summer is tempting, but keeping children’s curiosity and creativity engaged will help them with brain architecture or start the new school year more easily.
A study from the American Educational Research Journal shows that children in grades 1-8 lost 17-34 percent of the prior year’s learning gains during summer break. A Colorado Department of Education paper found that children in low-income households fall behind an average of two months in reading during the summer.
Anything you can do to spark your child’s interest over the summer can help them. Some families like to make book lists, mark progress on charts, or join summer reading programs at their local library.
If you’re looking for more unstructured ways to encourage reading, PBS Kids has some great suggestions, including listening to a storytime podcast, going on a story walk, or watching a PBS Kids Read-along.
Help your children find interesting topics and fun ways to explore them together. Remember, reading stories aloud to your children has clear cognitive benefits - strengthening the part of the brain associated with visual imagery, story comprehension, and word meaning. It also supports their social, emotional, and character development – vital tools for their success in school and beyond.
Thank you for your support as we build strategies to help our families with young children. We are focused on population-level change in Guilford County, so we can develop a system of care that other N.C. communities can replicate.
Sincerely,
Charrise Hart
CEO
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WJWI Institute visits Ready Ready
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Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) hosted members of the William Julius Wilson Institute (WJWI) at Harlem Children’s Zone and The Duke Endowment to explore the system of care we are building in Guilford County on May 23, 2023.
“When WJWI expressed interest in coming for a visit, we asked them – how much time do you have?” said Charrise Hart, Ready Ready’s chief executive officer. “Our work collaborates with so many partners in Guilford County that it was a challenge to fit a snapshot into just one day.”
Nationally recognized innovator in education and place-based work, Geoffrey Canada is the president of Harlem Children’s Zone and founder of the WJWI. He and six WJWI staff members asked Ready Ready to share the place-based system-building work being done in Guilford County.
“We have seen just extraordinary early childhood work with the folks at Ready Ready,” Canada said. “We think there’s a lot of promise here to demonstrate to the rest of the country what it really means to come together for the most disadvantaged children and make sure they’re successful.”
Learn more about the visit and the stops with Children & Families First, shift_ed, and Hope Academy on our website.
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In partnership with Book Harvest of Durham, N.C., Ready Ready distributed nearly 1,000 books to children in pre-K classrooms in High Point.
“Books on Break is a program that is designed to have kids choose their books,” said Rachel Stine, Book Harvest’s director of book abundance. “We know that when kids choose their own books, not only do they identify as a reader, they become more intrinsically motivated readers.
Ready Ready’s Ages 3-8 Director Coretta Walker and Literacy Coordinator Megan LeFaivre set up rooms at Guilford Child Development’s Staley and Macedonia Head Start Centers with attractive groupings of books on tables – like a pool party-themed book fair. Children entered five at a time to choose the five books they wanted to take home in a personalized book bag.
“The books are culturally relevant in terms of the characters, the storylines, and the language,” Walker said. “The pre-K students were able to pick books that they chose. They had hundreds to pick from – some early reader books, hardback, paperback – whatever they wanted to take home.”
Each child’s book bag had resources for families about kindergarten readiness and tips from The Basics Guilford. Learn more about Books on Break on our website.
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Leadership training graduations
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Congratulations to Ready Ready staff members Felicia Evans and Stephanie Skordas, who graduated from Other Voices, and Yuri Alston, who graduated from Leadership Greensboro in May. Learn more about the leadership programs and our graduates on our website.
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Ready Ready receives grants
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We are grateful to these foundations and all our funders for supporting our mission.
Leon Levine Foundation
Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) has received a $100,000 grant from The Leon Levine Foundation (TLLF). The grant will provide general support for Ready Ready’s mission to build a connected, innovative system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children and their families. You can learn more about these efforts on our website.
Lincoln Financial Foundation
The Lincoln Financial Foundation awarded Ready Ready a $25,000 grant to support early literacy programs. The grant will help implement a campaign for a grade-level reading action plan program.
Hayden-Harman Foundation
The Hayden-Harman Foundation has granted Ready Ready $10,000 in general operating support.
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Parent Leader Network: Building a positive culture webinar
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The Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) and the Children’s Trust Fund Alliance hosted a webinar about the power of family voice on May 11, 2023. The “Parent Leader Network: Building a positive culture” was co-hosted by Ready for School, Ready for Life Parent Liaison Sanaa Sharrieff.
“I realized my voice had power the first time I received a stipend for my input at a parent leader,” Sharrieff said. “It was an aha moment that I could see my contribution being used in a valuable way.”
During the webinar, Sharrieff highlighted the mission, format, and goals of The Guilford Parent Leader Network (GPLN) and Ready Ready. You can watch a recording here.
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Family Voice shared with statewide group
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Airreia Pierce, Paulette Bernard, Eugene Penn, Melissa Little, Janina Holt, Tisha Howard, and Yolanda Ikazoboh at the FELC spring meeting on May 17, 2023 in Greensboro.
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Six GPLN members participated in the Family Engagement and Leadership Coalition (FELC) spring meeting in Greensboro on May 17, 2023. It was a chance for them to network with other parent leaders, honor family leaders and their contributions, and create strategic plans for the future of family engagement and leadership in early childhood.
About 100 family leaders of children ages 0-8 attended the spring meeting. The Family Engagement and Leadership Framework defines and identifies important family engagement concepts for early childhood sectors and agencies. While its focus is ages birth to five, this Framework can be applied to the birth to eight age range and beyond, allowing for increased strategic alignment with initiatives such as NC’s Early Childhood Action Plan and Pathways to Grade-Level Reading.
N.C.’s Family Engagement and Leadership Framework was developed to guide improvement practices as well as policy and systems change to support early childhood systems that are family-centered and equitable, serving children in the context of their families and communities.
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Board Leadership Academy begins
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Guilford Parent Leader Network members are attending the Board Development Academy facilitated by the Guilford Nonprofit Consortium. The seven-session program is designed to help maximize the impact new, prospective, and existing nonprofit board members can have in our community. When they graduate, these parent leaders will have the practical knowledge and best practices to serve on nonprofit boards, build their networks, and access resources to further their growth.
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The Basics Guilford community outreach
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The Basics Guilford hosted a children’s book giveaway and book donation drive in collaboration with the Greensboro Bound Literary Festival on May 20. Families who stopped by the children’s book author sessions could choose copies of the books to take home at no charge. “We also collected 176 new and gently used books to donate to BackPack Beginnings,” said Ready Ready Literacy Coordinator Megan LeFaivre.
U.S. Representative Kathy Manning and the Library of Congress donated two large bags of books. “We have the opportunity to request extra books to bring back to our districts to give to schools and nonprofits,” Manning said. “There’s nothing like reading from a real book to a child. There’s nothing more important than having every child have books in their own home.”
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The Basics offered books, resources, and information to families at the High Point Farmer’s Market the same day. “We loved our set up next to the Qubein Children’s Museum chalk art activity,” said Ready Ready Communications Coordinator Andrea Miller. “We had a great time meeting High Point families and sharing The Basics.”
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Basics Guilford Focus: Count, Group, and Compare
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Babies Love Music...And Someday Math
Play music for your baby often - at home and in the car. We all have a natural love of music. Share this love with your child. Play gentle music or sing when you are together. Tap their feet or hands together in time with the music and count as you do it! This is a fun and easy way to expose your child to rhythm and patterns. Many nursery rhymes and children’s songs involve counting and can help kids learn about quantity, comparison, and pattern recognition.
Here is a helpful blog from Nursery Rhyme Central with a list of great counting songs to play and sing with children.
Did you know fact: The amount of “number talk” caregivers do when children are 14 to 30 months old predicts their understanding of cardinal numbers at preschool entry (thebasics.org.)
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Learn easy ways to do more number talk and play with your baby or preschooler.
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Do you believe in the tenets of The Basics? Help us spread the movement.
- Help us connect to local companies willing to give The Basics information to employees with young children.
- If you work for a community organization that reaches parents or caregivers, provide Basics materials to them and get involved with our PlayDaze event this September.
- If you are part of a faith community, help us connect to families there.
If you can be a connector, please let us know.
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Partner Spotlight: YWCA Emergency Family Shelter
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The YWCA Greensboro Emergency Family Shelter offers housing, food, case management, and support for families experiencing homelessness.
“We house men and women with children,” said Tiffany Dumas, the family shelter director. “Families can stay here 30, 60, or 90 days. Each family’s progress looks a little bit different, but the ultimate goal is to help them transition into permanent supportive housing.”
The shelter can house up to seven families or 20-30 individuals. Families may need help with child care, mental health, or other needs, so Dumas says the shelter works closely with other agencies and organizations to support them.
Twice-monthly community meetings with families and shelter family advocate staff keep the lines of communication open. “It’s a place where families have a voice,” Dumas said. “It’s a place where we can talk together about programs, activities, needs, and resources.”
Dumas credited Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) and its Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) training with helping shelter staff view their program through a new lens. The organization was part of Ready Ready’s second CQI cohort that wrapped up its nine-month sessions in March 2023. “It was so informative to hear from other agencies as we went through the CQI modules,” she said.
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Our mission
Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) is a collaborative effort to build a connected, innovative system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children and their families.
Equity Statement
Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) promotes equity, justice, diversity, and inclusion, which are woven through our mission, values, and principles. We stand against racism in all of its forms. Ready Ready will work with our community to address the structural inequities that drive disparate child and family outcomes and work towards an environment where equity, justice, diversity, and inclusion are core values. When we are working to address these structural inequities, Ready Ready will be bold in our actions.
When Guilford County Black and Indigenous children and families of color (BIPOC) feel welcomed, heard, respected, safe, supported, and valued, all of our community and our society benefit.
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