Maine Day by Day Family Literacy Activity Calendar



To celebrate Maine's Bicentennial, the Maine State Library has been working on a Maine Day by Day Family Literacy Activity Calendar based on a very successful model developed by the South Carolina State Library. We are happy to say that with funding from the Bicentennial Committee, the David Family Foundation and the Maine Community Foundation, we will be printing 30,000 copies of the calendar this week and will distribute the calendar to libraries in January.



We are so excited to feature some of the wonderful Maine authors and illustrators we all love.  I want to thank Kirsten Cappy of Curious City, Kara Reiman and Stephanie Schott (MSL present and past specialists) for the work they have put in over the last 10 months to bring this dream to fruition.



The calendar is free for every library to widely distribute to librarians, parents, teachers, grandparents or anyone who works with children 0-5. This perpetual calendar is designed to assist and encourage emergent reading. Each month features a theme around which books, songs, activities, arts and cultural events, plus health and family wellness information is centered. The Maine State Library wants to provide an easy to use tool built around the five early literacy practices - Read, Write, Talk, Play, and Sing -that everyone can use. Since 2020 is Maine's bicentennial, MSL also wanted to celebrate and feature the wonderful Maine authors and illustrators in the calendar. We hope the calendar makes it easy for anyone to implement the five early literacy practices.



We have developed a survey to find out how many copies you would like for your library and hope you are willing to distribute to pre-K schools, daycare centers or other organizations in your community that work with parents of young children.



Please respond to this survey by December 31, 2019 so we can begin to deliver calendars via van delivery or mail.  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VT6RQ8Z



Sneak peek to the calendar, a list of themes and featured authors and illustrators and link to the survey is at:

https://www.maine.gov/msl/libs/services/MaineDaybyDayFamilyLiteracyActivityCalendar.htm



Thanks so much and Happy Holidays to all!


Janet McKenney
Director, Library Development
Maine State Library
SHS 64
230 State Street
Augusta, ME 04333

207-287-5603
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@janetmckenney (Twitter)