This year marks Canada’s 18th year of celebrating National Family Literacy Day each January 27. Family Literacy Day reminds us to take time to learn together and receive the huge benefits for both adults and children.
Family Literacy Day raises awareness of the importance of family literacy. It helps us spread the word that learning can take place through a variety of different activities —reading and telling stories, playing games, going for a walk, on-the-land activities, or any quality time families spend together.
Our Family Literacy Trainee, Emily Smith, created a new resource called Storymakers for Family Literacy Day this year. Storymakers is a resource full of fun and creative ways to tell and share stories with families, friends, and your community. Stories help us learn about ourselves, our culture, and the culture of others. Sharing family stories is an important part of family literacy. You can find our Storymakers resource on our website.
We’re celebrating Family Literacy Day by visiting various community programs and events this week. We talked about how to choose books for different ages and gave free books to the parents at a post-natal group. We also visited the Aboriginal Head Start Program Parent Night in Ndılǫ to talk about the importance of bedtime routines. We did some of the activities from Storymakers during our visit to Aurora College’s Family Night on Campus. And we will be at the Festival of Silliness on Saturday and Sunday from 2-4 pm doing Storymakers activities with families.
This year it feels like we have a lot to celebrate. There are numerous community family literacy programs offering diverse programming, including elders and storytelling, cultural literacy, cooking, rhyming, and playing, to name a few. It’s hard not to be proud of what has been accomplished in the NWT.
We want to share information and photos of your Family Literacy Day celebrations and events in our newsletter. Tell us how you celebrated and we will enter you in our draw for a family literacy prize pack!
-- Charlotte Upton
