Llamas and Cats and Compass, Oh My!

At Compass we know that promoting early literacy is vital to ensure success in school and beyond for our youngest clients.  To help parents and their children learn to love reading, Compass Family Resource Center hosts a weekly story hour.  The wildly popular event features stories, songs, dancing and plenty of Cheerios!

For the second year in a row, the story hour group participated in Jumpstart's Read for the Record, a national event to raise awareness for the need of quality early childhood education for all children.  This year's book, Llama Llama Red Pajama, was the perfect companion for a cold and rainy San Francisco morning.  The children got cozy in new pajamas and enjoyed a festive story hour hosted by The Cat in the Hat.

Although he doesn't always come as The Cat in the Hat, each week is a special occasion and an opportunity to build community for Patrick Sosa, Early Childhood Educator at Compass Family Resource Center. He says of the event:

This group actually began 4 years ago at Red Hill Books in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood.The Story Hour started as a small event to meet the needs of the community, but within two years, each Story Hour was filled to capacity with children and their caregivers who danced, sang and ate plenty of Cheerios!  The event even made 7x7 magazine’s Top 100 Things To Do in SF Before You Die.  This celebration of community led to my desire to reach out further and I was thrilled to be hired to re-create this at Compass. 

The miracle of community is that with intention of the heart anything can be created.  The majority of participants for Story Hour are monolingual Spanish-speaking families.  Many of the children speak English in school but not necessarily at home.  This created a challenge for me, a monolingual English-speaker!  My love for music became the key, so by learning traditional Spanish songs I began to reach the families.  In turn, I began reading books in both Spanish and English.  This confidence to communicate in a different language was a direct result of the efforts of the community to encourage, accept and teach interdependently. 

While I stumble through a Spanish version of Corduroy the parents teach and guide me through the material.  When I read them Llama Llama Red Pajama in English, they learn new bedtime words and phrases such as, “Please stop all this llama-drama!” We laugh and learn from each other’s mistakes along the way and the kids benefit from experiencing a peacefully integrated fun and learning community event!