BINGO means books in Canby
By Robert Wolfington IIIArticle Photos
CANBY - Amos Sather picked out a book with bats, spiders and other critters that caught his attention.
Sather, along with his classmates at Canby Elementary School, brought home some winter reading during the Bingo For Books events Monday and Tuesday.
"It's a really good thing for the kids," said Angie Sather, Amos' mother. "They love books, so it's fun for them to come and win books and play the bingo, too."
Sandi Arndt, Canby Elementary principal, said the event is an opportunity to bring together parents and kids in the name of literacy.
"It's a literacy event and a parent involvement event that we do with a lot of different groups within our community to provide for our students," said Arndt.
Arndt said the event is split into two days, the first for kindergarten and first-grade students and the second for the remaining students at Canby Elementary.
"The first night we play shapes or letter bingo for the younger kids, and the second night we play regular bingo with the bingo machine," said Arndt. "Everyone wins a free book and we continue with a ton of other prizes."
Arndt said this year kids are reading about everything from their favorite new pop star to an old favorite: Big-as-a-House Puppy.
"Hanna Montana is really popular and some of the Dora the Explorer books are popular with some of the younger kids," said Arndt. "Clifford is always a favorite.
"Getting up into the older kids, 'Series of Unfortunate Events' and a lot of the other series books," she added.
Canby Elementary recently marked its 14th year of Bingo For Books, an event that started out much smaller.
"It started out as a Title 1 event, parenting involvement event," said Arndt. "At the time the only ones that were involved were the ones in the Title 1 program."
Arndt said the event has grown significantly the last decade, expanding to include all elementary students who are interested.
"They really started with a small group of people and every year after that we continued to add more partnerships like special education, head start, community education and the district - we were able to open it up to everyone," said Arndt.
Arndt said it's a good opportunity for families to come together and promote reading at the same time.
"It's great to see the parents come in for such a positive experience," said Arndt. "We do require the kids have a parent with them. It's a great way to interact with the parents and see the kids excited about reading and the fun things that can happen."
Angie Sather has seen what the event means to students. Amos is her third child to go through the book line.
"This is actually our third child to go through this," said Angie Sather. "We did it with our daughter and other son, too."
Angie Sather said her kids look forward to the event every year, marking down the days until it comes.
"Ever since they started talking about it in school the kids have been making sure they knew when it was coming up," said Angie Sather.
