"Oh, honestly, don't you read?"

Almost exactly one year ago, Mrs. Quint and I were preparing for the Lock-In event after a successful Read-A-Thon fundraiser and reading competition. The Lock-in has become a major highlight and capstone of the Read-A-Thon each year.

The event is filled with games, pizza, dance parties, crafts, and prizes. DJ Denise (Mrs. Haney) keeps the energy up with fun songs and contests. And we finish the night with popcorn and movies. Last year, we actually had several students stay up the entire night watching movies and playing games until their parents came to pick them up! It’s a great way to recognize the hard work the students put into raising money for the library and technology programs.

Sadly, we are not having a lock-in this year, and our overall Read-A-Thon and Read Across America Day celebrations were a little different.

During the February Read-A-Thon, students in every grade were invited to read about 10-20 minutes each day for 3 weeks. And students really rose to the challenge!

From February 1st to 21st, students read over 39,000 minutes! There were two classes that had 100% participation! Seven students read over 1000 minutes each--and two of them read over 2500 minutes each!

And this year’s Read Across America Day celebration was a chance for us to try something new. Usually we recognize Dr. Seuss' birthday and announce the top readers and fundraisers from the Read-A-Thon (the photo of the students spraying teachers with silly string on our homepage is from last year's assembly). This year, all of our classes gathered online via Zoom for a story from Mr. Wagner and a fun game of Kahoot! where students had to match groups of emojis with a book title. (1st place: Mr. Pounds’ class; 2nd place: Preschool; 3rd place: Mrs. Reimer’s class) We’re looking forward to more school-wide Kahoots before the end of the year!

While it is sad we can’t enjoy some of our fun traditions around this time of year, it has been a good opportunity for everyone to try something new. We are looking forward to bringing back the full Read-A-Thon experience (kick-off party, fundraising and reading competitions, lock-in) and in-person all school assemblies in the future, but for now let’s focus on the accomplishments of all our wonderful readers last month and the unique moments this year has brought.

Every day is a good day for reading. Reading cant take you on a journey to a fantastic new world, back to a historic event, or just introduce you to someone/something new. We are so proud of all of our readers at Saint Andrew's and hope they will continue pushing themselves to read each and every day.