A Short Story for Ladywood Children’s Centre

Last updated 17th November 2009

Claire Short, Local MP for Ladywood, attends the nursery to publicise improving literacy within the community

Local MP, Claire Short, paid a visit to the Ladywood Children’s Centre recently to help promote its week-long story festival and present prizes.

Staff at the Centre demonstrated the Council’s core value of excellence by all joining together to produce and plan the festival, which consisted of different activities for each day, including a treasure hunt competition, nursery rhyme painting and reading at home.

The Centre welcomes children aged 0-5 years from many different cultures, and the theme of the week was to raise the profile of literacy within the community.

Competitions were held to see who could read the most stories in a week, and the winner was a child who had 35 stories read to her over a period of four days! Children and their parents also took part in a treasure hunt with mums and dads reading the signs around the centre to lead to the clues.

Integral members of the local community including a policeman and staff from Tesco were involved in a reading aloud relay, and the chief partner of the local medical centre even brought in his own book to read to the children. The firemen unfortunately could not take part after all as they were called out to an emergency.

The week was an outstanding success which supported Brighter Futures principles of improving literacy and numeracy and ensuring children are well prepared for learning when they go to school.