Bula Ghosh of Great Plains College, Tekeyla Friday of the Chinook Regional Library, and Cortney Reynolds of Southwest Mobile Learning attended the most recent city council meeting to proclaim Jan26th to Feb 1st as Family Literacy Week.
Ghosh provided details on this year's theme.
"This year's theme is "Learn To Grow Together" which focuses on raising awareness about the responsibility of taking care of the environment."
In addition, Ghosh stated that studies have shown that when children are exposed to books at home at an early age, they have a better chance of acquiring good reading and writing skills. She also provided some background on the history of Family Literacy Day.
"Family Literacy Day began in 1999 to raise awareness of the goodness of reading and engaging in other literacy related activities as a family."
A number of literary events will be taking place this week including the Saskatchewan Literacy Network organizing a virtual book reading across the province of Mariam Korner's book Fox & Bear. This event will take place this morning at 10:30am and Korner will also be holding a special session on how to make your own characters from recycled materials. The reading is open to the public and will be streamed on the Saskatchewan Literacy Network's YouTube channel and registration is required through an online link on their website. The book will also be featured as a story walk at the Swift Current Mall from January 24th-31st.
Grade three students in the Southwest will also take part in a virtual reading of a book called "Fire On The Mountain" by Pamela McDowell on January 28th.
The Southwest Literacy Committee also have a number of new projects for this year including looking at a two-year-old reading kit as this has been another area of development identified in children and creating a story walk in partnership with the city through one of the city's walkways or parks. There are also hopes for a grocery store literacy project where families visiting their local Co-op will have some literary activities they can engage in while shopping.