February is “I Love to Read” month and Central Elementary spent the whole month celebrating and promoting reading, culminating in our annual Read-a-thon fundraiser. Overall, students brought in a little over $13,500 in pledge money for the Read-a-thon! This money is used to support events, such as Literacy Night and Family Fun Night, help provide scholarships for field trips, and of course buy books and magazines for students.
For the fundraiser, students received prizes based on a scale for money brought in, such as a camouflage flashlight and a ceramic mug. Students who collected $150 will receive a Central Raiders sweatshirt. All of the prizes showcased Raider Pride and included the Central Raiders logo. Parent volunteers helped organize and distribute prizes. For every $10, students also were able to put their name on a ticket for a raffle drawing. Amazing sets of books were given away and the grand prizes were two Kindle Fires. The K-2 grand prize winner was Arlie I. and our 3-5 grand prize winner was Paisley S.
To encourage extra reading at home, we included a contest for minutes read outside of school. K-2 classrooms had the goal of 3000 minutes/classroom, while students in grades 3-5 had to read 5000 minutes/classroom. Each class who met this goal earned extra recess time and every single class met this challenge. The overall minutes read at home tallied up to 128,123!
On the last day of the Read-a-thon, students wore pajamas and had guest readers come into classrooms to read out loud. The youth librarian from Carver County came to be a guest reader as well. It was a great month to celebrate reading- and celebrate Central!
