Charles A. Reinhard Early Childhood Center students have traveled the world during the month of January through the annual Pick a Reading Partner program.

PARP is a New York State PTA Program, which encourages parents, staff and community to collaborate in the building of a reading partnership between home and school and to motivate students to love reading. This year’s theme is “Reinhard is Reading Around the World” and students were encouraged to read at least 15 additional minutes each day. Principal Patricia Castine said that there has been so much participation that the original school goal to read an additional 50,000 minutes was accomplished by the third week. The school reset the goal to reading an additional 100,000 minutes by the end of January, and students surpassed that goal by reading 106,201 minutes. Reading times were recorded in a passport each evening and counted in class the next day.

During the month, the curriculum was infused with copious reading activities, in addition to regular English language arts curriculum. The month commenced with a virtual event with the popular Huga Tuga show with performer Joe Shandrowski. Mystery Reader parents also created read-aloud videos for the teachers to play for students.

There was also a PARP community connection. Bellmore Memorial librarian Pam Pegones created a video with books from around the world for teachers to download and read to students. The books she selected exposed students to greetings and traditions of various countries and tied into the PARP theme. One such selection included Caldecott Award winner Rachel Isadora’s “Say Hello” about a young girl who learns to greet people in her neighborhood who speak other languages. Miss Pam also read tales from Korea, Iceland and Italy, which all demonstrated the various ways people are the same, even though their culture may be different.

Ms. Castine said she is extremely proud of the district’s Bellmore Rising Stars who demonstrated continuous improvement in their reading.