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Hi. I am a Grandparent Volunteer at Milwood Elementary School, Kalamazoo, Michigan. I have been a volunteer for the system for 13 years. Here at Milwood the last 5 years.

We have put together a book bag program, "Books To Go Home" for our students. It is all volunteer work. We put 2 or 3 books in a bag and send them home with our students that have no books at home, live in shelters, or have not access to public libraries during Winter Break, Spring Break and Thanksgiving Break. We have approximately 600 students. We can send home books with about 300 at a time. Our goal is to be able to send home books with all our students.

I keep track of what the students have read by having a sheet of paper with their names and the book titles on it. When they bring the books and bags back in good condition, so we can recirculate them, I keep the papers. Then when I set up for the books to go home again, I can make sure they don'[t get the same books twice. I also send books home by their Accelerated Reading Levels.

We sent home books for the Winter Break 2008-09. We had about an 80% return of the books. We also use the 3R's. Respect, Responsibility, and Results. We have incentives for the children to bring the books back. I am working on the Spring Break books now and very happy to see that there has been an improvement in many of our students.

We also have a display, Winter Break was a dragon, that we type student name, book title, teachers name and them make the display. There was scales for the dragon. For the Spring Break, we are using Cones and then will make the scoops with the information on. The students have loved seeing the Dragon grow. I am sure we will have many scoops of ice cream to display after they return in April.

Hi. I am a Grandparent Volunteer at Milwood Elementary School, Kalamazoo, Michigan. I have been a volunteer for the system for 13 years. Here at Milwood the last 5 years. We have put together a book bag program, "Books To Go Home" for our students. It is all volunteer work. We put 2 or 3 books in a bag and send them home with our students that have no books at home, live in shelters, or hav... More