I need your help!

Hello, everyone! I am humbly asking for your help to get the word out about Random Acts of Reading. Within the first week of launching the blog I heard from many people who loved the idea of this project and wanted to help in some way. Over the next week or so I am going to do some behind-the-scenes work to spread the word via emails. However, I would love it if any or all of you would share about the project on your own blogs. In the very near future I hope to have a blog button available for you to post on your own blog. Until then, I would be so grateful if you could link to the blog to send more people this way. I really believe we can collectively give 2,010 books in 2010 if we work together. I am also going to start a list on the sidebar of the blog with bloggers who are willing to pledge to give books through this project. If you would like to pledge, leave me a comment here or email me to let me know how many books you THINK you could give this year. Don't worry.........I won't hunt you down in December if you haven't given as many as you thought! When you do give a book, just send me a quick email telling me how many and (if you want) the titles and I'll include your books in the "official" count. For more information about how to participate, read THIS POST. Are you with me??
I can't wait to hear from you!!

PS: If you would like to participate and don't have a blog, please comment or email me and I'll add you to the sidebar list as well!! I'll just list you by your first name and/or nickname or by whatever name you'd like!!

2,010 in 2010

I have been really excited about the great response this idea has generated so far........and it's only been online for 4 days! That got me thinking about how more people could become involved since many of you have indicated that you'd like to join the project. So...........I've decided to put forth a challenge. Could we (collectively) gift 2,010 books into the world in 2010?? I think we can!! I hope I'm not biting off more than I can chew by launching this challenge since that means I will be coordinating it. Here is how I think it can be accomplished and I'd love your feedback.

First, I completely acknowledge that any and all readers of this blog can decide to go forth and drop off book packs on their own. AND...........I completely support this. I think it's wonderful. And if you choose to do that and not have any direct involvement over here, that's great!!

Second, if you would like to be involved in a total book drop count through this blog, please email me at the link on the sidebar. Let me know how many book drops you've done and I'll keep a running tally. They don't have to be titles that I've highlighted on the blog. If I have highlighted it on the blog, I'll keep track of the total number of books donated by title by putting that number in parentheses next to the book title. Make sense?

Third, if you are participating in the challenge via this blog I would really appreciate having you download and print the labels I've designed and attach those to your book packs. That way people who discover the packs can view the site and see that they are part of a bigger project. Of course you may also include any other information in your book pack that you choose to add. On the sidebar I've added a place where you can download the labels via my Typepad blog since I haven't figured out an easy way to do that through Blogger.

Finally...........thanks so much for your support and interest. It will be fun to see where this leads!

Drop #1: Corduroy by Don Freeman

Saturday evening the boys and I made our first book drop! We left the book pack in a local discount store on a rack with the crossword puzzle books. I am curious about how people will respond to this when they find it. When I was looking at The Toy Society's blog today I noticed that all their drops are outdoors. Here in the midwest right now we have about 2 feet of snow on the ground and the temperature is hovering right above 0 degrees right now. So we dropped it in a store. Perhaps the store employees will confiscate it, but my hope is that they will then take it home to share with their own children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, etc. We'll have to wait and see. Below you can see the photo I snapped of our dropped book pack.

If you have found this book pack, please leave a comment so I know how you found it, what you thought, who you shared it with, etc. If you've never left a comment on a blog before, just scroll down and click on Post a Comment. Then follow the directions. You can leave a comment anonymously.

Some people have asked about whether I will make it possible for others to participate in this project. The answer is.......YES! I am trying to figure out a little more about how to facilitate that right now. However, this post contains a link to the activity I included with my copy of Corduroy. If you do a drop on your own, for now you could leave me a comment on this post telling about it with a link to your own blog if you have one. As the project grows the process for this will most likely be adapted. I'm also working on a way to make the labels I'm using for the book packs available for download so we can have consistency for those who wish to participate.

Corduroy by Don Freeman is a classic children's book that celebrated its 40th birthday in 2008. That means this book is just a little bit older than me. Ha! Hopefully it will be treasured by whoever finds it. I have printed off a button patterning activity from Homeschoolshare to go with this book.

Before we made the drop today I read the book to my 4 year old and he did the button patterning activity two times. When I told him we would then leave it for another little boy or girl to find he was excited. He suggested that we not leave it in the middle of the road because a car would squish it. I assured him that we wouldn't leave it in the road. :0)

Until next time.............keep reading!!

Assembling the book packs

I thought I would write a post about how I assemble the book packs to prepare them for "drop off." First of all, the books I am using are books that we have duplicates of or books that I've picked up at thrift stores or garage sales. I am not financially blessed enough to be able to go out and purchase brand new books for this project. With that said, I am going to be picky about the condition of the books. They must be in VERY good used condition, preferably without any marks or writing. I am also going to be pretty particular about what books I drop. I plan to only drop off books that I consider to be quality children's literature.



The books will be packaged in plastic Ziploc bags. For the larger books I will use 2-gallon bags, but many will fit into gallon-sized bags. Each bag will be labled as shown below with a "Take me home!" sticker and a sticker that briefly explains the project. I am covering the stickers with clear packing tape to be sure they will still be readable even after being dropped off. If an activity is included in the book pack, the materials or pieces will be contained in a separate Ziploc bag which will have a sticker label providing the directions for the activity.



This photo shows a book pack and activity bag.









Here is a close-up of the stickers on the outside bag.







Here is a close-up of the sticker on the activity bag. I am just printing these out on large (2X4") Avery shipping labels. Same for the "Take me home!" and description labels shown above.






Here is a photo of the activity for this particular book.






And this final photo shows everything neatly packaged in the bag and ready to be dropped.

Random Acts of Reading--The Beginning

Hello! Welcome to Our Random Acts of Reading. I've written this post to explain how this new blog evolved. If you've followed my personal blog, A Day of Wonders, for a while you may know that for the past two years I've planned special activities to do with my two boys during the season of Advent each December. On Christmas Day this year my wheels were already turning, thinking about what I wanted to do with the boys for Advent in 2010. Almost immediately I decided that I wanted "blessing others" to be the focus of our activities next Christmas. There are so many things we can do that would fall under the umbrella of being a blessing to others. One thing that I thought about right away was taking part in The Toy Society project. Doing a "toy drop" has been on my to-do list for quite a while but I have yet to make a toy. During Advent 2009 the boys and I read Christmas books and made ornaments to go with them. I am a big fan of planning activities that correlate with the books I read to my children. Once my wheels started turning, it didn't take long before I came up with the idea of anonymously leaving children's books with corresponding activities in public locations for people to discover. And that, my friends, is how Our Random Acts of Reading was "born." Within a few days I had fleshed out the idea and designed the new blog, the one you are reading right now. It is my hope that this project can grow from its humble beginnings into something much bigger with many people participating, similar to how the Toy Society project has blossomed. For now I plan to use this blog to document my own "book drops". I would love to hear feedback from anyone and everyone about this idea. Expect a post VERY soon detailing my first official book drop. Until next time............keep reading!