Read-a-thon

Hi, to all my summer conference friends! The school year has gotten off to a good start for Crickett and myself, except that, even though her room is only 4 doors away, and the teacher's lounge is across the hall - I almost never see her during the day! Crazy busy!

I have had to decide to scale back some of my overly ambitious plans for the year. I've had some heavy-duty family responsibilities come up, so the quilt and dolls for the Susan Butcher Family Center have been pushed to the back burner. I have come up with another idea, however, and I'm hoping that maybe some of you will want to join me in this worthy cause.

I am hoping to organize a read-a-thon during the Iditarod. The plan is that students collect pledges for every minute or page (haven't decided yet) they read during the race. The money collected would be donated to the center. I have heard from Shelley Gill (through a friend of hers) that the center is needing cash donations. One of the elementary schools in our district did a read-a-thon last year just to raise funds for their bookroom and they made $10,000. That's pretty powerful cash for an elementary school. I don't know that our school would be that successful, but I would hope that we could raise some decent money. I will be putting together pledge kits with information about the family center and the race. I will be happy to share anything I put together. I think it is so important to teach our kids to be giving and I think the kids will be motivated by the race and the cause.

If you have ideas about how this might work or any other ideas to help out the center, please e-mail me or post here. I'll post more info as it becomes available.

Hope your year is going well - we're almost at midquarter - can't believe it. My kids have almost finished their quilt squares for Jane's project. They are so excited to have that connection with Alaska (their eyes get so big when they talk about Alaska!).