Thursday, March 20, 2014

Encouraging Literacy with a Box of Cereal

This post and community project is sponsored by Little Free Library and Alpha-Bits. Thank you for reading along and in that way encouraging literacy in our community!
Back in January, I was contacted about partnering with the Little Free Library and Alpha-Bits for a really fun and unique literacy campaign. Our family (all six of us!) LOVES reading! We have so many books in our house that it's kind of crazy. Sean and I both came into our marriage with our own bookshelves, and we quickly realized that books took a huge priority over other furniture when we found ourselves eating at a card table instead of a kitchen table. True story! So anything that involves reading always perks my ears up.

When I was approached about partnering with Little Free Library and Alpha-Bits to help bring something to our community to promote reading and learning, I was all over it!

Today, I'd love to share a little bit about one half of the brand partnership for this literacy campaign, and then I'll share about the other half once our new library is fully installed and ready for readers! This project won't be completely finished until this summer, but I can't keep it to myself anymore, so you get a sneak peek!
Alpha-Bits is one of the brands that I'm lucky enough to work with on this project! You've probably heard of the cereal already, but if you haven't, it's a really fun (and yummy!) way to encourage little ones to learn their letters and practice spelling. It makes sense that they would be one of the partners in this big endeavor!

Alpha-bits is literally a box of cereal in the shape of letters. Even the "Q" is included! My kids thought that this was the best thing ever! Up until now, we've had "circles" and "squares" for breakfast, but the letters are something new. I love finding those little things that encourage learning but don't sacrifice the fun to do so. My goal as a mom is to teach my kids to love learning and love stretching their minds. It's never too early to introduce the big wide world that reading can introduce to a person.

And thankfully, Alpha-Bits isn't one of those sugary cereals that I feel the need to avoid. With 20g of whole grain in every 30g serving, only 6 grams of sugar, and a slew of vitamins and minerals, I'm happy to have this in our breakfast rotation!
So how did we use our letter cereal in our morning routine?

Because my littles are only three years old, we kept our Alpha-Bits fun simple. The kids took turns announcing which letter they were holding and then gleefully eating it. I also helped them each pull out the letters of their name so that we could practice spelling them. That's a lot of fun for a bowl of cereal!

Elijah tried the best he could, but eventually, he decided he was more interested in just getting the cereal to his mouth as quickly as possible. Haha!
So how does a box of cereal play into the library I mentioned above? Well, the Little Free Library is sending me...a library!

I know, I know. Libraries are free by definition, right? This one is unique though because it is set up out in the community, is open 24/7, and operates on the "have a penny, leave a penny, need a penny, take a penny" principle. So anyone at anytime can drop by, browse the library (which looks like an over-sized bird house), and take what looks interesting. They can also leave behind books that they are finished with so that others can borrow them.

Because the Little Free Library and Alpha-Bits are partnering together, our community is going to get one of these library houses for FREE!

I. Love. This!

Supporting community literacy in a fun way!

There are tons more details like where the library will be located and which fun characters I ended up getting on my library...but you will have to wait. In the meantime, there are an estimated 10,000-12,000 Little Free Libraries across the US, so take a minute to search for one near you! And while you are at it, grab a box of Alpha-Bits cereal and help cultivating a love of reading in your little ones!

P.S. If you are in the Kansas City area and have some extra books (kid or adult) that you are finished with, considering helping the community by adding them to our library! It should be up by May. Just keep the books clean and appropriate though, okay? Stay tuned for more details...

Leave me a comment with which characters you think I might have on my Little Free Library. I left a hint somewhere in this post!

Thanks to Little Free Library and Alpha-Bits for sponsoring this post and project for our community! This post may contain affiliate links. For more info, please see my disclaimer page.

6 comments:

  1. Those Little Free Libraries are so fun! I wandered into a little neighborhood northwest of Shawnee Mission Parkway & Nall last night, and found three of them before I got turned around. My kind of neighborhood!

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  2. What a great idea! I had never even heard of them until I saw something on Facebook about how cute it would make your home to have one in your front yard. Then to read this post mere days later and find out you're getting one. How exciting! :)

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  3. Alpha-Bits? Im not very good at taking hints sometimes lol.
    I never thought to use cereal to teach! That is such a great idea! I will have to keep that in mind when my grand daughter begins to eat cold cereals. By that time, she will be ready for this type of learning. Thank you for all you do!

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  4. My mom's next-door neighbor has a Little Free Library. It is so cool. We only get down to Florida once or twice a year, but I love visiting it.

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  5. I'm guessing the Super Why characters!

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  6. We JUST bought alpha-bits this week! I don't think I've purchased them before, but they were on sale and I was surprised to see that the nutrition facts weren't that bad. (And yes, my son loves the superwhy on the front!) I was wondering what we were going to do educational with them--I like the idea of matching up letters to spell words on paper.

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