Paint The Town REaD

The amount of time the child spends listening to parents and other loved ones read continues to be one of the best predictors of later reading. Maryanne Wolf

I’ve discovered a fantastic Australian invention (no, not the petrol-powered lawn-edging tool that killed this morning’s birdsong): Paint the Town REaD is a fantastic literacy-building model that encourages communities to read, talk, sing and rhyme with children from birth. It includes a Reading Day that engages the whole community in reading. It’s a bit like ‘stop, drop, and read’ in schools, but instead it’s shopkeepers, politicians, sports heroes, police, business-people and high school students who stop and read aloud to children all over town. The thing I like about this model is that it’s been a grass-roots initiative, not imposed by bureaucrats. I imagine it would translate well into NZ communities.

Photo: Stories in the local pharmacy.

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