After a 240 hour book drive, we collected 207 books total. We made 70-something educational bookmarks, We even had some donated by my Creative Writing class, as mentioned in a previous post.
The project took an overall 88 hours.
TREE House was BEYOND THRILLED when we installed the shelf this past Monday, and are so excited to use it as a therapy tool this year.
(Setbacks...)
**As a small side-project, with the leftover materials from making cushions for the book nook area, my team and I made dog toys for the local animal shelter. This Generated 14 dog toys for homeless pets!! However, the only thing that went wrong was when I broke my fabric scissors in half. (HA HA)**
"FINAL REPORT"
My Project addressed the issue of the diminishing love for reading in children, as well as lack of educational materials for kids to utilize while in waiting rooms at Therapeutic Horsemanship. I hoped to harbor a love for reading within young children, while also helping them pass the time while their siblings were in horseback therapy sessions. The siblings of riders benefit from this because they now have something to do. Parents benefit because they don't have to entertain their kids, and riders benefit because they can use the shelf to help with speech and audiology therapies.
The root cause of the issue is that there were no activities for children in the viewing room at all, so to address the issue, I provided a book shelf for children to utilize, which doubles as a therapy aid.
My project will be sustained beyond my involvement. It has a "Take a book, leave a book" concept, so that it is constantly circulating new books. At the same time, TREE House has agreed to keep the shelf forever, so it will forever be kept going as a lending library.
"Study of young American readers shows a fall of nearly 10% since 2010 of young readers doing so ‘for fun’" . Reading is declining in children all over the country. By providing a fun, visually pleasing book shelf, it attracts kids to the idea of reading for fun. At the same time, 1 in 12 children have some sort of speech-related disorder. Reading aloud from books can help these children tremendously. Though the book shelf is only in one location, it is a start to help children all over the world that have disorders to read as therapy.
"Never stop doing little things for others. Sometimes the little things occupy the biggest part of their heart"
