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published on 4 September 2020 | reading time approx. 3 minutes
How about horse racing against Winnetou, looking out for time thieves with Momo or plunging together with Bastian Balthasar Bux into the Neverending Story? Some kids also still secretly hope to meet an owl which has wandered through many places to find them and has at last delivered a long-awaited letter from the popular magic school.
We enjoy recalling our first great reading adventures which took us deep into magic worlds and broadened our horizons. Books spark our imagination and thus also our creativity. But there is more to it than that: reading skills are a cornerstone of all education processes, thus laying the groundwork for our participation in society and success in adult life. That is why the Rödl Employee Fund for Children’s Aid has decided to contribute to the promotion of reading by supporting the “1000+1 books” project of the association Lobby für Kinder e.V. from Nuremberg.
Reading promotion should start from early childhood. However, a study on reading stories to children, which was conducted in 2019 with a representative sample of 700 parents, revealed that this was often not the case in reality: one-third of the interviewed parents read books to their kids (aged 2-8 years) only rarely or never at all. The daily working life of parents leaves them no time to set out for a reading journey with their kids. TV, tablet and games console offers are available everywhere, so it is not uncommon that parents never read their kids any stories. The situation was still worse in educationally disadvantaged families: more than half of these parents read their kids stories maximum once a week or never at all. Parents do not serve as a role model for their kids. Many families simply cannot afford to buy any books. Therefore, many kids grow up without any reading experience, which in turn results in poor concentration skills, limited self-expression ability, worse educational opportunities and opinion forming difficulties.
In order to counteract this development and to encourage kids to read, the Rödl Employee Fund for Children’s Aid has joined the “1000+1 books” project of Lobby für Kinder e.V. and donated reading materials worth 3,100 euros to cover the needs of two Nuremberg schools.
On 17 July 2020 we handed over a total of 300 exciting, enjoyable and informative books for 11 school classes of the special education promotion centre [Sonderpädagogisches Förderzentrum] in Langwasser. Every class will receive its own collection of books, which can be easily exchanged between classes of the same age group using practical mobile bookcases in the kids lobby. The books will be selected from the “Antolin” reading promotion programme in consultation with the teachers of individual classes and supplied by the Weidinger bookstore from Nuremberg's district Mögeldorf.
Due to Covid-19 the handover ceremony was small and in line with social distancing rules – the participants were allowed to take off their face masks only for a short while needed to pose for a souvenir picture. As a thank you, we were happy to receive the kids’ colourful posters illustrating their favourite books and to taste the delicious honey from the school-owned apiary, a gift from school headmaster Inge Döllinger.
The second portion of our donation will go to the Jean-Paul school: The new reading materials and the enlarged library collection will give students the opportunity to experience a lot of new reading adventures and discover the joy of reading.
We would like to thank Lobby für Kinder e.V. for excellent cooperation and wish all children a lot of reading pleasure!
Source: Study on reading stories to children conduced in 2019 – Using speech stimulating activities in families to prepare and support the practice of reading stories to children
Rödl Employee Fund for Children’s Aid
Christina Hundertmark
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