CG Birthday: Book Fair List for Week of the Young Child
Our Book Fair is Live!! You can access it Here. Any of the books on the website will contribute to our fundraiser so long as you follow the directions on our book fair page.
Not sure what you want to read? No worries! We will be posting excellent book lists all week.
JUST LIKE THIS ONE! See below for recommendations of excellent children’s books for celebrating Week of the Young Child with us.
Music Monday:
Acoustic Rooster and his Barnyard Band
One Love: Music Books for Children
Music: A Foldout History Book
Music Board Book
Tasty Tuesday:
Kids in the Kitchen — A whole Scrawl Books catered book list about cooking with kids.
Work Together Wednesday:
The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room
The Berenstain Bears and the Trouble with Chores
The Berenstain Bears: Patience Please
I Just Forgot
Art Thursday:
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Red: A Crayon’s Story
Anywhere Artist
A Parrot in the Painting: The Story of Frida Kahlo and Bonito
Family Friday:
Daddies Do
Love Makes a Family
Llama Llama Gram and Grampa
Grandpa Grumps
Grandma, Grandpa and Me
Between Us and Abuela
Just like Mama
All Smiles Saturday:
CG Birthday: How to Celebrate with Us!
We are turning 49 on April 6th, but we are celebrating ALL MONTH LONG!!
Normally this would warrant one of our excellent all-school events with food trucks, moon bounces, a giant cake, maybe a carnival…
But since we can’t do that, we are finding a ton of new, exciting ways to celebrate, and we want to tell you how you can join us from your own home.
Sign up for our Spring Stuffy Sleepover!
Our featured author Andrea Lamont will be doing a reading of her new book “The Friendship Rock” for the stuffys and their kiddo friends at home. This event is a total blast that we really think is a perfect way to celebrate together while apart.
Participate in and Share our Book Fair!
From April 12th-April19th, 24/7, you can participate in our Online Book Fair with Scrawl Books! There will be readings, book recommendations, and wish lists! Whether you are supporting your classroom, buying your kids’ new favorite book, or finding your next “relax by the fire pit” Spring read, any book you buy supports our fundraising efforts to raise money for our Non-Profit mission. The best birthday present you can give Common Ground is helping us raise money for our educational efforts.
Host your own Fundraiser on Facebook!
Our Non-Profit missions benefit our students, our teachers, our outreach, our support of much needed educational reform. By supporting our beloved school, we are also supporting our community! Helping us raise money to support those efforts is an AMAZING WAY to help us celebrate our birthday.
Here is our Our PayPal Donation Link where anyone can donate! Thank you for widening our impact.
You can Celebrate “The Week of the Young Child” with us!
We have several activities we are doing with all of the children at the center, but here are some ideas for how to celebrate at home!
Music Monday: Instead of turning on the tv when you get home, turn on the stereo and have a dance party!! Show your kids your favorite songs, and let them show you theirs, make a big Youtube playlist of your favorites, dance your heart out!
Pro Tip: Eighties Pop makes great Dance Music, here is our Owl’s Spotify List.
Struggling to come up with songs? Check out our Mister Josh Rock at the Blocks series on Youtube!
Tasty Tuesday: THROW YOUR OWN COMMON GROUND BIRTHDAY PARTY!! We know putting together something complicated on a Tuesday night feel like it’ll take more energy than you have, so you can always save this for a free weekend day. Whether you decide to try it on a weeknight, or a weekend, this does not have to be over the top to be special with your kiddos. Big Bird has a super easy Banana Bread Recipe! Make healthy banana bread “cupcakes,” stick candles in them, sing Happy Birthday, and chow down!
Work Together Wednesday: At school we will be planting our new class gardens!! We encourage you to plant local, pollinator-friendly plants with your kiddo so they can contribute to a healthy environment. Every little act brings great goodness to the world, and if your kid learns that early with you, they will be more confident and ready to do more and more each day.
Artsy Thursday: Draw chalk art on your sidewalk. Send postcards to family members you haven’t seen awhile with pictures from your kids. Let your kids paint with ice cubes or paint rocks to leave on your local trails. Any little art project that you do with your kid is time spent creating something lovely in the world, no matter what your skill level is. This is also a perfect opportunity to show teacher appreciation: If you want to make your teacher’s day, have your kiddo make an art project for them telling their teacher just how much they matter.
Family Friday: Movie Night! Family Walk! Shadow Charades! Board games! If you want to make it Common Ground themed, this is a fine night to throw the CG Birthday Party! You can also do a “name that teacher” guessing game.
All-Smiles Saturday: Sign your kids up for our Saturday Session on April 10th! While your kids are partying it up with us, you can relax, go on a date, do some much needed yard work, finish that 1000 piece puzzle you’ve been saving, anything that makes you smile!
HOWEVER: If SPRING CLEANING without interruption is what really makes your Saturday perfect, we highly suggest saving any gently used clothing/linens, small household appliances, personal accessories, and books for our JUNE FUND-DRIVE DONATION EVENT! By cleaning out your houses and freeing up your space, you could earn your school BIG MONEY. It’s our favorite type of “fundraiser,” because it is a WIN WIN WIN. You get a cleaned out bureau and don’t create more waste, we get much needed funds for our various educational objectives, and someone gets much needed “new to them” items for an affordable price from UNIQUE without creating more waste.
Whatever you do to celebrate, however you do it, please send us pictures. We would love to make a huge birthday picture collage for the center to show all the ways we honored Common Ground Childcare. Show us your cakes, your decorations, your art projects and gardens! Whatever it looks like, it was done with love, and that is everything to us.
Love Love Love,
Your CG Family
P.S. Let us know how you plan on participating on Common Ground’s Birthday in the Comments!
Birthday at CG: Book Fair
One of the best events that can happen at any school is A BOOK FAIR!! What is a more wholesome way to support your school than to get kids excited about reading?
This CG Birthday Book Fair is being hosted by our local friends SCRAWL BOOKS and it is COMPLETELY ONLINE! Which means it goes 24/7 from Monday, April 12th to Monday, April 19th. You can shop together at home. You can share with your friends and family all over and help them find their new favorite book WHILE earning money for our educator support funds.
All week we will be featuring books with recorded readings, so check out our Facebook and YouTube to see which books our kids like best!
We also have wish lists for each classroom as well as the weekly Summer Camp themes, so check those out as well if you would like to directly support your classroom!
OUR BOOK FAIR IS LIVE! CLICK HERE!!
How does it work? Simple! You can see our recommended book lists on our Book Fair site HERE, but you can also just go to https://www.scrawlbooks.com/ and shop ANYWHERE on the site!
How do we get credit? Easy. Read the instructions below. These are also available on the Book Fair webpage.
Checkout:
Checkout as you normally would, but please note the following:
1. Use COUPON CODE: In order for Common Ground to receive credit for your purchase, you must use COMMONGROUND.
2. SHIPPING METHOD: Choose Common Ground Book Fair.
3. ORDER COMMENTS: Note the name of the student and grade where books will be delivered. If your books are presents and you want them held in the library for pickup please make a note of that (wrapping on book fair orders is not available). Families with multiple children are asked to choose one classroom for order delivery OR place separate orders for each child.
Delivery:
All books purchased through the Common Ground School Book Fair will be delivered to the classroom specified in the order comments, 1-2 weeks after the Book Fair ends.
Please let us know if you have any questions. We are so excited to do this with our favorite local bookstore! Supporting us in the Book Fair is also supporting them, which is amazing, especially during the pandemic.
HURRAY BOOKFAIR!
— Mrs. LJ and your CG Family
P.S. Do you want MORE recommendations? We wrote a fantastic Earth Day post HERE with ten amazing Biology/Environmental books for clever youngsters.
Friends of CG Fridays!: SCRAWL BOOKS (With Exciting Upcoming Events!)
Scrawl Books over in Reston Town Center is a fabulous gem on Reston’s “Shop Local” Crown.
When I found out they were putting in a little bookstore right on the corner of Reston Town Center, I was absolutely delighted. It is within reasonable “Lunch Break” walking distance. It has an amazing selection, and whatever they don’t have they’re willing to order. They support local authors.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, their events promote early literacy and support several wonderful causes. In short? They’re just Good people. Good people doing Good things. And we love having friends like that.
When we contacted them a few years back to do live readings in their store, they were so supportive! They not only let us swipe their stuffy sleepover idea, but they donated items for the stuffy goodie bags!!
On Friday, March 26th, they’re actually doing their own Stuffed Animal Sleepover featuring Children’s Author Ethan Berlin! Children drop off their stuffies for a night of amazing activities, including a reading by Ethan Berlin himself of his new book I am not a Dog Toy.
Sign Up Here if you are interested.
And now, they are going to be doing a BOOK FAIR WITH US in April to celebrate Common Ground Childcare’s 49th Birthday.
When: April 12th to April 19th (LINK INCOMING, STAY TUNED). It is an online bookfair, so it goes 24/7 that entire week!
Where: Scrawl Books will have a page for us on their website, so we will post the link for that when it’s available.
How: We will have recommended books and classroom wishlists on our special link, but you can buy any of the books on the site once you have clicked through! It is not just for kids, stock up on your adult summer reading too!
Why:
- Books are brain food: For our birthday, we are promoting early literacy, consistent literacy, holistic literacy. Reading is good for everyone of every age, no matter what style of book you’re reading. Pick books out for you, your kids, your friends, your family, your school. Pick books out to donate to charity, or for your child’s classroom.
- #ShopLocal: You will be supporting a local business! Scrawl Books is a Reston treasure, and supporting them is supporting your whole town.
- Fundraiser Time: Scrawl books will keep track of how many books are purchased during our book fair and Common Ground will get a percentage of the proceeds! Is there a better birthday present that?
The Pandemic has hit all of our local businesses hard. Right now Scrawl Books is open for curbside pick up and delivery, and we hope that our Covid-19 numbers will go down and enough people will become vaccinated that we can all be together again. Until then, Scrawl Books has agreed to do live online readings for our classrooms on Wednesdays. They are partnering with us and supporting our school. The very least we can do is talk about how wonderful they are, and recommend them every chance we get.
THANK YOU, SCRAWL BOOKS!!
Love Love Love,
LJ and your Common Ground Family