VdM's Summer Reading Challenge!

Get ready, Villa di Maria families!  Mrs. Schwind is throwing down the literary gauntlet!Ready to rise to the reading challenge?  AWESOME!Here's everything you need to know to get started:Hello Villa Families!Are you enjoying the long, long days of summer?  I certainly am.  One of my favorite things to do during during the middle hours of the day when it's too hot to go outside is TO READ!  Finding a nice cool spot and traveling in my mind to some distant world of facts and stories is a lovely way to while away the hours.What I love about reading is how it takes you places you might never otherwise go.  Whether it’s a biography of a person who lived in a time before us, a travelogue of a remote location you might never reach, or a vivid tale of an imaginary world, reading reaches across time and space and lets us go anywhere.*Hopefully, all of our families are encouraging the wonders of reading with the children.  Whether you read to them or they read to you or everyone reads to independently, it is important that children practice and enjoy reading daily.So, bring on the Villa Summer Reading Challenge!  It will be a "traveling" challenge to represent just how far reading can take us.Here’s how it works:

1. Make a list of books and who in your family has read them.  The whole family can participate! 
2. Email that list to our fabulous blog keeper, Meg Mottl at megm@villadimaria.org.   She will keep a combined list of what has been read by our Villa families on the blog, which will serve as a great place to gather ideas on what to read next!
3. For each book read, you earn VdM a "meter" toward the distance "traveled" with books by all of Villa di Maria Montessori School!
4. If you read more books, you keep sending updates to Meg until August 15th.
5. After August 15th, we will see how far we’ve traveled.  For each hectometer (100 meters!) our Villa community has traveled, Mrs. Schwind will donate $1 to a charity, which the Lower Elementary will choose in the Fall.  You and your family can join the donation portion of the challenge if you wish.  

Where could we go?  It is 750 meters from Villa to Pi Pizzeria on Manchester (750 books!)  It is 3.4 kilometers (a kilometer is 1,000 meters) from Villa to Kaldi’s Coffee in Kirkwood. It is also 3.4 kilometers to the Kirkwood Public Library from Villa, but 4.5 kilometers to the County Library Headquarters on South Lindbergh.  It is 8.3 kilometers (8,300 books) from Villa to Ms. Schwind’s home.  It is 27 kilometers from Villa to the Arch (27,000 books- WOW!).  I can’t wait to see how far we get!I’ll kick it off with the list of books I’ve read (so far) this summer:Horns - by Joe HillThe Underneath - by Kathi AppeltThis Census-Taker - by China MiévilleUprooted - by Naomi NovikPacking for Mars - by Mary RoachOnly 95 more meters (books) until Mrs. Schwind has to begin putting money toward a worthy charity.We can't wait to see the lists of book titles come rolling in!Remember, our Summer Reading Challenge goes until AUGUST 15th!HAPPY READING!