Warm Hearts inspires third graders

Warm Hearts, a charitable organization in Michigan, presented dictionaries to the third graders at the nine elementary schools in Taylor School District. Carol Sharp of Warm Hearts writes:

This is the way we presented the the books:
We gave the children a toothbrush imprinted with the statement "KNOWLEDGE REDUCES FEAR," and we talked about that and how they should read that statement every time they brushed their teeth in the morning.

We also stamped every dictionary with four statements in four different colors. First statement on the front page in red – "YOU Have GREATNESS Inside of YOU " directly under the signature line, then on the top of that page we stamped in green "KNOWLEDGE is POWER." We talked about the statements. On the second page in purple the statement "A New Word A Day Brings Knowledge Your Way."  How many new words would they learn in a week? How many new words would they learn in a year? WOW. The last statement in blue on the back cover, "What Dreams and Goals would YOU set for Yourself if YOU knew YOU could not fail?" Most of the children didn’t understand the blue statement, so the example we used was to ask if they had ever seen a baby learning how to walk (of course the answer was yes) and the falling down and getting up over and over again and never giving up. All the children understood the goals and dreams statement then. By using four different colors the children had no trouble keeping up and reading with the group.

We also gave all the children a Smartie candy, because we knew they all would become smarties with their new dictionaries.

We presented all these items in what we called their COLLEGE BAG (this was a hit). Our local community college gave us plastic bags with their name on the bags – Wayne County Community College.

We then showed the children the dictionary and how to use it, and our POWER WORD of the day was "KNOWLEDGE" with the silent K. And then for all the wonderful information in the back of the book, we had a little time for self discovery. Children were hugging their books.

This was a wonderful experience for me, beyond anything I would have ever expected.

Your choice of books and the information in the books are perfect, just wonderful.

Thank you again.