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The Hillsboro City Library is launching a new program for its youngest patrons called 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten. 1KBBK is a nationally recognized non-profit organization that promotes early literacy skill development and parent-child bonding through reading in children ages birth to five. The program is simple: read 1,000 books with your child before they reach kindergarten and keep track of their progress. Research on reading with young children indicates that reading to children helps build language skills, improves social emotional learning, encourages brain development, and improves their chances for academic success upon entering kindergarten.
Parents can use the Beanstack app provided by the Hillsboro City Library to easily keep a record of their child’s reading progress. To register your child for this new program, visit hillsborotx.beanstack.org. Create an account and begin recording the books you and your child read together. Parents and children may read 1,000 different books together, or read the same book 1,000 times. If a parent and child read just one book every night, they will finish in three years. Three books a day will see you finished in just a year.
To make keeping track of how much you read easier, the Beanstack app rewards virtual badges for every 50 books read. For every 100 books your child reads, their name will go on the library’s Tree of Accomplishment located in the children’s library. When your child completes the challenge by reading 1,000 books, they will receive a backpack of school supplies and a new book to kick-start their kindergarten adventure. In addition, a book of your child’s choosing will be donated to the library in their name with a commemorative plate inside the front cover of the book recognizing their achievement. For more information on the benefits of 1KBBK visit 1000booksbeforekindergarten.org or call the library at 254-582-7385.
