• To educate all community members who interact with children from birth to five about the benefits of singing in all areas of early learning, with an emphasis on language development and early literacy.

• To make singing together a daily habit of adults who interact with young children
  by providing songs and community-wide opportunities for singing

• To create a community model that can replicated anywhere

• To promote free website and its use nationally and internationally

• To educate parents about using technology to enhance and not impede early learning

Supermarket Snake
Families will be invited to meet at each of our 3 community supermarkets and hold hands to form a snake that will go through every isle while singing a marketing song! We'll stop along the way to identify letters (supermarkets are a great place for letter hunts!).

Book Store Boogie-
Similar to market, but of course, we'll be making our way through the book store- also a great place for letter hunting!

All-Island Ring Around the Rosy
Once a month a meeting place and time will be announced, and we'll form a circle and sing. The group will increase in size every month, and by the end of the project in May, we can try for the Guinness Book of World Records (currently around 900)! These will be done in highly visible public parks.

Neighborhood Sing-Alongs.
These will be coordinated to happen at the same time all over the community. Sing along-lyric sheets with guitar chords for traditional songs will be available to print out from the website. We'll select 10 "endangered" folk songs and sing to revive them!
During each of the Tweet Events, we'll have parents pull out their phones, take a picture, and tweet it out the the world! The goal will be to increase awareness of early learning through community singing by holding these unique events. Sounds like a lot of wild and crazy fun, doesn't it? Of course, let me know if you have any ideas!

Here is a link to a pdf list of favorite picture books based on songs, with a strong rhythm, or with a song as part of the story.
 All titles have at least 6 available copies in the King County Library System, so if there isn't a copy at Mercer Island, you can place a hold on it on the computer. Big thanks to our wonderful children's librarian, Margaret Martin for compiling the list, and writing the introduction. These are all favorites and great ways to build early literacy! You'll find even more titles with my recommendations and notes about availability on the bookshelf page of the website soon!   BOOKS THAT SING

I have lots of events scheduled now, so be sure to click on the Live Calendar to see them all and get details on the time and place. This month I'll be doing several "Sing Into Reading" events at the Mercer Island Presbyterian Church for parents, grandparents, and caregivers of children birth to five. Refreshments included!
Weekly Story times at Mercer Island Library
Monthly Grandparents Gatherings
Monthly appearances at Island Books

It's all about connections! And for grandparents who can't attend the gatherings, there will be an instructional video on this website showing them how to do this themselves. In fact, every live part of the project will have corresponding information on the website so you can take advantage of all the same materials.