Magazine Literacy Bee

[img_assist|nid=65|title=|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=125|height=165]One lesson that we have learned is that collecting a steady supply of recent issues of children's magazines in KinderHarvest bins can present a unique challenge. Here are some considerations and tips that should be helpful for getting started:

1. Will you be coordinating the effort yourself or with a team, or will there first need to be an individual or group that can coordinate this on your behalf? It makes sense to put a team together representative of the teachers and parents in your school.
2. Let us set up the point of contact for your KinderHarvest literacy drive in this Literacy Bee blog to record an account of the steps being taken to define and to meet your needs. That will chronicle the effort, create a repository of information that your school and community can tap into, and provide guidance and inspiration for others with similar needs in communities across the U.S.
3. Define your needs specifically so they can be communicated to the community. For example, how many copies of which magazines would you like to have on the shelves of your school library? How many children are at each grade level, and at each reading-age level in your school, that would benefit from having their own copies of magazines? Are older issues of magazines useful, or would there be limitation to just more recent issues of magazines? The KinderHarvest effort would proceed to meet your goals. Of course the needs and goals could change over time, but you'll want an initial target.
4. Next, you'll organize the magazine collections. You'll need volunteers for this and especially to pick-up and deliver the magazines to the school on a regular basis.
5. In addition to KinderHarvest, consider finding business and other sponsors in the community who would fund sets of new magazines for your school library.