"Fight Evil, Read Books" 4th Annual Read-A-Thon

March 4, 2013 ~ Today started off our "Fight Evil, Read Books" Read-A-Thon at Midway Heights Elementary School! My awesome co-Partner in Education, Tanya Alberty and I have created this yearly read-a-thon and something that I think we enjoy as much as the kiddos! Each year we have came up with a different theme and try to keep the theme rolling all week long.

The read-a-thon brings in about 70 community members/business owners/leaders into the classrooms to read a book and talk a little about why reading is so important with their respective jobs. Our goal is to encourage reading and make it fun! This year we decided to use Twitter to "tweet" pictures of our guest readers under the hashtag #mheread so if you have Twitter you can see pictures throughout our week!

This is Tanya Alberty and I... 

Aren't we a mess! Ha! 

On Thursday, Tanya decided that we needed to dress up as our favorite super hero.... Actually the whole school participated in this activity.... and I will have to say it was fun! We try to encourage students to make up their own super hero and be creative. There were some great super hero's like....

These cute little guys.....

or Captain Underpants! 

Honestly some of my favorite costumes were kids with blankets as their cape's or something they made to give them super powers! Love seeing kids using their imagination! 

Thursday night was also our 3rd Annual Literacy Night. This event is held in the evening (usally from 6-7:30 pm) at Midway Heights Elementary School. We have tried to interact the parents and students with a guest author and I was asked to be our guest author this year. I was able to introduce my book "Tom T's Hat Rack" to many classrooms during this week and I had an extra special guest that would be attending Literacy Night with me.... Mr. T himself! 

It was exciting for me to introduce Tom Trabue (aka Mr. T) to everyone! He really is an inspirational guy and watching him go through cancer including his treatments with such a positive attitude on life is what I believe helped him on the road to recovery. (He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma in May 2012 and by Christmas 2012 he was cancer free!)

We even got to sign some books!

This whole week was a lot of fun! Although it's a lot of work (thank goodness I have a rock star co-pilot that keeps everything together and comes up with some way cool ideas) it's totally worth it! If we can help fight literacy and encourage reading early on then I think Midway students are on the right road to success! We are both very proud of our partnership with Midway Heights Elementary School and can't wait for next year's read-a-thon!

Midway Heights Elementary School is so lucky to have some pretty amazing teachers!

 What was pretty cool was that someone used the example of  "Paying It Forward" to their teacher, Miss Windmiller on Friday morning! How cool is this!?!?