Coming to you live from the second day of Read Across America Week! Monday, staff and students came to school decked out in their favorite hats in honor of The Cat in the Hat (Don’t believe me? Check out the selection of headwear in the photos below!), and today we are celebrating Green Eggs and Ham by sporting green from head to toe. Don’t forget to wear your silliest socks and shoes tomorrow for The Foot Book day!

At Johnson, we love visitors. Young and old, teaching reading or chess, playing or working… we love having new friends join the Johnson community. So we were extra excited to spend our first day of Read Across America week with some of our favorite visitors – the ladies from the University Virginia chapter of Pi Beta Phi. You might remember this wonderful service sorority from last year, when they came to share stories with our third graders and give away books on a beautiful spring afternoon. I am so happy that Pi Beta Phi reached out to us again this year to spend Read Across America together. And, as you’ll see from the pictures below, our students weren’t too!

Pi Beta Phi spent the afternoon sharing Dr. Seuss stories with Johnson’s kindergarten and first grade students, helping us to celebrate his birthday. As if that wasn’t enough, they also awarded us with a grant for 500 FREE BOOKS – enough to send one home with each student, add to our library collection, and build classroom libraries all over the school!

Your eyes are not deceiving you, there are TWO zeroes after that five. FIVE HUNDRED FREE BOOKS! It took more than five members of the Johnson family AND five volunteers to lift, unpack, and organize all of those books. Once they were unpacked, teachers were invited into the library to “shop” for their students. Teachers were thrilled to be choosing from such a wonderful selection, and took time and consideration to find a book for each student that would be truly enjoyed. Each student will receive one free book to take home and keep, thanks to the generosity of our friends at Pi Beta Phi.

Thank you so much to the wonderful, caring, and patient members of Pi Beta Phi’s University of Virginia chapter for being such excellent members of the Johnson family. We love our new books, but most importantly, our students truly love sharing literature and quality time with you. Thank you for giving your time to us, and we hope to work with you again soon!

See you tomorrow, Johnson family! Don’t forget, Wednesday we will be celebrating The Foot Book – so wear your wackiest socks and shoes to school!