Okay, it may be hard to imagine now that most of our communication comes via email or messaging, but real mail can be exciting. In an age where mostly what we see in our actual postbox are bills, ads, or political flyers, Nebraska Growing Readers (NGR) is creating excitement about mail . . . and it’s for our youngest residents!
Renae Norenberg, who has owned and operated Nae’s Away from Home childcare in Fremont since 1990, says, “my kids just get ecstatic. They watch for the mail. It’s like they know when those books are going to be coming. They want to open the door to see if they have a little box on the porch. We can’t open them fast enough.” Norenberg is talking about the free boxes of NGR books that are sent to early childhood educators who are registered with the program.
Each month, she receives copies of 10 different titles that she can put on display for families to take home so they can build their own libraries. Norenberg takes one copy of each book to keep on hand because, as she says, “I’m huge on reading to kids and how important it is.” The rest are taken home by her families.
At Nae’s Away from Home, her children love to make the NGR books part of their daily play. Norenberg describes the library game they play where she must be the librarian who scans their books when they bring them to her. She also likes to make the books part of the activities she includes in her daily schedule. “Every day there’s a national something day,” she says. Recently, it was Eat Your Vegetables Day, and Norenberg read the children NGR books like Count Your Veggies and The Fruit Market. To enhance the reading, she gathered the plastic fruits and vegetables she had in her play kitchen and had the children identify which were fruits and which were vegetables. She then had them sort by color and count the number of each color they had.
She emphasizes that it’s important to “be down there interacting with them. If you’re not interacting with them, they’re not going to absorb as much.” Norenberg appreciates the size and durability of the books, pointing out that other heavier books are costly to let the children play with on their own because of potential damage. The NGR books, however, are sturdy enough not to tear easily but are lightweight and fit the children’s hands. They can turn the pages easily, she says, carry the books around with them, and they’re simple enough that some of the older kids can sight-read words by connecting them to the photos on the page.
One child in particular has taken to the books. Mason has been with Norenberg since birth and is about to move on to kindergarten in the fall. Norenberg says that Mason is one of the children beginning to sight-read words and that he has worked his way through all the phonics books she has. Mason’s mother Sara learned about NGR through Norenberg and signed up for the new Incoming Kindergartener program that sends 4 books a week to registered families for 25 weeks.
Like the children at Nae’s Away from Home, Mason is excited to receive his books at his house as well. Sara says that he wants to stop at the mailbox every day on the way home to see if books have come. “When he gets them,” she says, “he opens them up and adds them to his collection of books (NGR) in his room.” Sara says he will share with his younger twin brother and sister, but “he’s very protective of his books.” She tells how he takes the books all over the house in a box he keeps them in because he is so proud of them. “He likes to sit and look through the pages and make up stories with them,” she says.
When asked, Mason says he likes the construction books the best, but his mother adds that he got really interested in a recent book he received about healthy eating. She says that Mason has been “learning about what’s healthy and taking an interest in that.” Sara says she likes the wide range of subjects, and she or her husband read with Mason every night. She’s pleased that Mason knows some sight words from the books and is learning a few more words as well. She says of NGR, “I think it’s a great program. I’m really glad our provider told us about it.”
Norenberg is pleased as well. She says of NGR, “I really like everything about the whole thing.” She is proud of the children she works with and recounts that all her former children graduated from high school in the honors track and that all have been accelerated readers. As Mason follows in those footsteps and heads to kindergarten, Norenberg says to him, “I don’t know how I’ll do it without you.”
She smiles and admits that she’ll still be seeing him after school for a while. This gives them time to check the mail, to watch for those NGR books, and to share the joy of reading together.
