PBS KIDS Share a Story is a national literacy campaign designed to inspire adults to help millions of children develop language and literacy skills through daily activities, including book reading, drawing, storytelling, rhyming and singing.

Literacy experts have long recognized the link between children's exposure to language and their eventual reading success. The PBS KIDS Share a Story campaign aims to demonstrate how any caring adult can help raise a child's reading achievement.

Description of event:

This collaborative effort is to create public awareness for literacy activities.  Our goal is to increase the number of times that families take quality time to  sit down together and read. The activities will include a story teller from the library to read stories and do finger plays and Parent Educators from the Parents as Teachers program to incorporate activities that will enhance the books that are chosen to be read.  We will also incorporate activities from the UNC-TV and PBS programming web site (PBS KIDS Share a Story) and show how to tie these together.  This meets U.S. Department of Education, PBS, UNC-TV's, and  Smart Start's literacy standards.
 
Community Impact Statements about UNC-TV's First Books:

"The First Book Club most definitely helps us to reach literacy goals, as, so many of our children do not possess books to keep in their home, now we are placing books in the families hands to build each child's library and make available books for parents to be able to spend that quality time with their child and read.  It's such a powerful bonding and teaching experience for families.  I don't know how to thank you enough for including our program in your literacy initiative."

"One last thing... I went on a home visit just before Christmas and the mother had the TV on your station when I arrived.  She went to turn it off and I told her that she was watching one of my favorite children's shows (Between The Lions).  This family is a Spanish speaking family and she just smiled at me.  She makes sure that her son watches this show each day because he is receiving Speech Therapy and they are starting to introduce English words into his therapy sessions.  She went on to tell me that this show was one of the ways that she learned to speak English.  That is a very powerful statement to make about your programming.  Keep up the good work for the CHILDREN and the PARENTS you never know when your are truly making a difference."

Look at What Happened in 2003 - 2004