Month-long Celebration Inspires Children to Be Lifelong Readers

March has been a month-long celebration of reading At Claremont School in Ossining. Third- and fourth-graders have been participating in fun activities every school day – a visit by author Kirby Larson on March 1, Drop Everything and Read on the 4th, Wear Your Words day on the 13th, and Dress as Your Favorite Book Character on the 15th, to name a few.

“We’ve done Reading Week every year, but this year we decided that we’d celebrate all month long,” said Principal Kate Mathews, who dressed as Mrs. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus series.

On March 15, students dressed as characters from “Alice in Wonderland,” the Harry Potter series, “Peter Pan,” “The Bad Guys,” The Geronimo Stilton series, “Little Red Riding Hood” and others.

“It’s great when children get excited about the characters in the stories that they read and then bring them to life,” Ms. Mathews said.

Third-grader Valentina Cordero carried around a small wand in honor of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Her godsister read the books and passed them onto her. Her favorite spell is Expecto Patronum, which protects against Dementors.

Alison Yunga and four of her friends dressed in grey, wore cat ear headbands and drew whiskers on their faces in honor of Pusheen, a grey cartoon cat. “I love Pusheen because it’s cute and we all like cats,” she said.

Also that day, the dual language teachers dressed as different colors of crayon and did a dramatic reading (in English and Spanish) of “The Day the Crayons Quit” by Drew Daywalt. Their voices and the facial expressions they used made the children laugh.

Last week, Claremont had a Community Book Read, a book fair sponsored by the PTA and two visits by author Jarrett Lerner. School staff invited families to read “El Deafo” by Cece Bell (“Super Sorda” in Spanish), about a deaf bunny, and discuss it at the school. The Community Book Read was sponsored by Manhattanville College, which paid for all the books.

They finished out the month with “author walks,” in which students learn about authors by reading posters set up around the school.

“Our theme is ‘reading takes you places’ and our goal is for students to see reading as a part of their lives and something that’s really going to help them grown and learn and discover new things,” Ms. Mathews said.