Thursday, July 16, 2015

Lively Little Learners Pre-reading and Arts Camp

pre-reading and arts camp, lively little learners, kids learning to read

Before my kids started kindergarten, I enrolled them in a day camp to help them adjust to being away from me each day. It surprised me at how hard it was to find a camp for them to attend prior to their first year of school. Most of the camps I saw were for 5+, and I needed one that would take 3 year olds (Mr. K is a late August baby).

Lively Little Learners is more than just a camp. They have a reading program including self-published books that engage kids in pre-reading skills, and they want to distribute these books free of charge to child care centers, schools and libraries.


If you are in the Toronto area, Ruth Rumack’s Learning Space is offering Lively Little Learners - a pre-reading and art camp for 3-5 year olds. Taught by accredited educators, kids attending Lively Little Learners will not only have free play time, but they will spend their mornings exploring letters and the alphabet, and in the afternoons will get the chance to access their creative sides in an art appreciation program.

Camps are running Monday to Friday the weeks of August 24th and August 31st, and are from 9am - 2pm. The cost is $275 per child and there were 9 spaces left in the camp at the time this was published.

This is something that struck my interest, as Mr. J was very behind in his reading. With his severe speech delay, it had him behind in all things language. He did not know any of his letters entering junior kindergarten, and was quite behind in his sound/letter recognition at the end of senior kindergarten. We hired a tutor to come once a week and work with him on his letters and sounds, and this work progressed into reading as well.

I can still remember him saying he was stupid and dumb because he couldn’t read – it absolutely broke my heart to see him so discouraged. He worked REALLY hard with his tutor and by end of grade one was actually reading at a mid-grade 2 level. I think that these books would have been great to have access to, and this camp would have been such a great way to help prepare him for school.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing this post,sounds like a wonderful idea!

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    1. It does - I wish they had something like this in our area when my kids fit that age

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  2. What a great group to have in your community!

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