The National Center for Family Literacy and Better World Books are proud to announce 20 mini-grants winners that have proposed creative ideas for using Wonderopolis® with families.
Wonderopolis provides family-friendly content that is practical, easy to use and designed to engage children’s natural curiosity and transform it into a lifelong love of learning. Wonderopolis is a place where wonder and learning are nurtured through the power of discovery, creativity and imagination through “Wonder of the Day.” Wonders of the Day will help you find learning moments in everyday life, ones that fit in with dinner preparations, carpool responsibilities, a stolen moment between breakfast and the bus, or within school curriculum and education programs. You can explore all this innovative site and community has to offer here.The National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL), which is the worldwide leader in family literacy, created Wonderopolis. More than one-million families have made positive educational and economic gains as a result of NCFL’s work, which includes training more than 150,000 teachers and thousands of volunteers.We love partnering with the NCFL and Wonderopolis because of their tremendous positive impact in the lives of families and students across America. On a recent trip with NCFL, I was able to see the real difference they make. We interviewed a women named Maria who was not even able to help her sons with their homework until the NCFL’s family literacy program came to her local library. Now, Maria is studying to become a citizen and her young sons are incredibly proud of her English skills. (More of Maria’s story will be available in a mini-documentary on our blog soon).

The $500 mini-grants were awarded to 20 schools, libraries and community-based organizations that submitted innovative ideas for adopting and using Wonderoplis with the families in their existing programs. Most target at-risk populations, including a program for children whose parents are in prison.

There is tremendous variety in the programs – from elementary schools to gifted programs to school-to-home outreach. These programs, urban and rural, reach more than 2,600 students and their families in 11 states.

Winning applications range from creating mock trials and editing video footage on iMovie that can be posted online and shared with other students, to making a Wonderopolis quilt, to creating a blog to post student videos and photos.

The mini-grants will help personalize Wonderopolis for families in their programs and communities. Further expanding the impact, the grants also will give other programs and communities ideas for how to maximize the use of Wonderopolis.

This is the latest partnership effort between NCFL and Better World Books, which began in 2005.

Congrats to the winners

The winners, listed by state, are:

• Arizona: Sopori Elementary School in Sahuarita
• Arkansas: Centers for Youth and Families in Little Rock
• California: Leonardo da Vinci Health Sciences Charter School in Chula Vista, Fremont Adult School CBET Family Literacy in Fremont, Knights Landing, Children’s Center in Knights Landing, Long Beach Unified School District in Long Beach, Grand View Boulevard Elementary in Los Angeles and Gompers Middle School in Los Angeles
• Indiana: Brownsburg Public Library in Brownsburg
• Iowa: Williamsburg Public Library in Williamsburg
• Kentucky: Jefferson County Board of Education (Family Education) in Louisville, McNabb Elementary School in Paducah and Pleasant View Elementary School in Williamsburg

What do you wonder about? Post a comment below and we will share it with Wonderopolis!