Literacy program creates strong bond

After moving to Langley with her young family, Evelyn Moi was intrigued by a flyer her daughter brought home, an invitation to a literacy program.

It was called Bond to Literacy and was designed to help families with children between three and five years old develop literacy skills.

Moi’s daughter, who had some reading challenges, was seven and therefore too old for enrolment. But Moi gladly signed up her youngest son, Julien, who’s four and hearing-disabled.

And she recalls now after completing the 12-week program that it was the best thing she could have done not only for Julien but for her daughter Eleanor, 7, her oldest son, Theo, 10, and herself.

“This program has helped me in particular to slow down, really slow down, and to bond with our children with a book,” said Moi in the kitchen of her Langley home on an acreage in Glen Valley, where she lives with her three children and husband, Chuck Precourt.

She’s learned through Bond to Literacy how to really be present when reading to her children and take time to study the illustrations with her children and to see how they help tell the story.

Bond to Literacy, which is partly funded by The Vancouver Sun’s Raise-a-Reader literacy campaign, grew out of a longer more involved literacy for mothers program called Hippy — Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters.