Our book elves have been busy helping Gigi make Christmas a little brighter for some local kids by adding books to their lives! Everyone chipped in to help get books ready for two projects including our biggest yet. We donated 75 handpicked books to kids through the S.A.F.E. Center, the local domestic violence shelter. Also some UNK students took some of our books to the hospital - there's a picture with a Scooby-Doo book we donated - Click Here to read the full UNK article. Yes, Gigi the bookworm just made its biggest donation! It took a while for the books for the S.A.F.E center to be ready because we needed to find 75 books in perfect shape. After all they are presents!! But once the project was ready it felt really good to know that 70 girls and boys got presents. Even though they were books. Hopefully having a new book will help them to love books just like me!
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I did a lemonade stand called Lemonade for Literacy. It was at UNK which is were my mom works. It is a college so there were lots of students. We also sold bracelets that I made myself! Those weren't as popular but we sold 3 or 4 of them. We raised about 35 dollars going to buy books. We also got lots of boxes of books (enough for about 2 projects!) So make sure to come back to see new projects soon!! Every year Lambda Theta Nu sorority does Literacy Grams Week on our campus to promote literacy. This year I decided to ask one of the students about partnering with GiGi the bookworm and they were on board for a lemonade stand. GiGi was a little timid but served up a lot of lemonade and helped raise some money for future projects! This project took a long time to be ready. We lost the stickers a few times and even lost the box! But as you can see we got the books delivered to WIC. Just like with the classroom I got to talk about GiGi the bookworm and how we help kids get books and stuff like that. We set the books on a shelf and since I used bright color I was sure they would see it we left the box there with a sign that said free books (one per child) I had lots of fun on this trip. WIC is a great program that helps low income families get healthy food and education so when we were thinking of our next project it seemed like a great choice! I was pretty proud of my bookworm for talking to the director about the project getting everything ready herself. A pregnant mom took a book and planned to read it to her unborn child - starting literacy early, that makes this mama heart happy! Happy Reading!
I think these are some lucky 1st graders! Gigi the bookworm gave away JUST over 200 books!!! l am SUPER proud of Gigi the bookworm, l never thought we could give away this many books. But now l want to give away 300! Even though that would take quite a long time. Anyway I read the 1st graders a book (I chose it because it was autographed by the author - Marc Brown) and they loved it then when I told them I had a surprise for them they got even MORE excited! I pulled out a box of books and they didn't look very impressed until I said it was for them! I passed out the books and let them choose which one to keep. Having the opportunity to read to the class was new for my shy bookworm, but she was thrilled when I told her the plan. She chose her book, put on her biggest smile and told the kids she loved to read and would love to read a book to them. Then it came time to pass out the books - one little boy shouted "I don't LIKE books!". So the moment which I loved most was when he asked "Can I have the Scooby Doo one?" and smiled when I said I didn't think he liked books. This shift in kids is part of what Gigi is about. In our house books are FUN, cuddle time, birthday presents, laugh inducing, and part of everyday life. While reading doesn't come easily for all kids my hope is to help each kid have a book they can love and read or have someone read to them. Thanks for helping us make this vision come true. * Sorry this post was so late - we forgot to publish it and it was stuck in drafts!
15 more books are delivered to 15 more children!! Since it was Christmas time we delivered books in stockings for my mom's work. I got the idea because the 1st thing on my Christmas list was books! I thought some other kids might like books in their stockings too. The books for this project were donated to kids that live at RAFT which is an organization whose mission is "to provide services to those in distress through a structured residential program while empowering working families to overcome poverty and homelessness." My co-workers decided to gift these kids with some Christmas goodies and of course GiGi & I were excited to add books to the list of presents which would make their Christmas a little more special! Gigi the Bookworm is on a roll!!! We just gave away about 86 more books to just 1 place, COMPASS! COMPASS is a foster care agency and we gave books to all the kids.
This was our biggest project by far - we almost doubled the total number of books we've given away and are close to 200 books given away. SO thankful to everyone who has donated books to our projects!! We already have the ball rolling on our next, smaller project so be sure to come back for updates! Our second Gigi the bookworm project!!! About 48 kindergartners got Gigi the bookworm books. We also started putting stickers that show our website, our logo, and our name. Most of the books we gave away were from the Jubilee Center store and some of my mom's friends. My mom gave it to my kindergarten teacher that I had when I was kindergarten. GiGi did a great job getting the books ready and THANKS to her grandma who printed the labels for us so everyone who gets a book will be able to have a place to write their name inside and make it their own! We are gearing up for our next project helping get books to kids in foster care and brainstorming more ways to help get books to kids.
I was so exited when Gigi the bookworm's first project was ready! It took almost a month and a half to be done!!! When my mom saw how many books I had she thought some thing had to be done. So we came up with the idea to give books to my 3rd grade class and the other 3rd grade class. When we did everybody was so excited! She's right, she had WAY too many books. She had read them over and over so it was time to let someone else enjoy them. She started by going through her own books and picked out around 25 of her own books to give to her friends. She picked them out one by one and wrote each of her classmates names inside each book. Then we took a couple trips to our favorite thrift store and bought more books from them to get all the books we needed for her class. When I got to school I laid the 40 books on peoples desks. When my class was back everybody was saying things like What? and Why do we have books? I was very happy that everyone thought that they just got books from a bookfair or something. Then I came around and told people look at the front page and then they saw that it was from me! All day everybody from my class and the other class they were saying "Thank you Giana for the books!" We had a lot of fun with our first project and are excited we have already given away 40 books! We can't wait to see how many more kids we can give books to and share our story with you.
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AuthorGigi and her mom. Archives
November 2018
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