Leapfrog Summer Reading Program

I was beyond thrilled when Leapfrog contacted ME and asked me to be one of their Summer Reading Ambassadors!  To help make reading even more fun for kids of all ages, Leapfrog sent me boxes and boxes and BOXES of their Tag and Tag Junior Reading Systems and all they asked in return is that I find willing participants to give them too.

I immediately contacted Becky, the children’s librarian at Delta Township District Library and asked her if I could come by with my Flip Mino video camera and record her and I opening the boxes and talking about what the library was getting. There’s just one problem- after I uploaded the video to Flip Share, I created a movie so I could upload it to YouTube and embed it here. Except I accidentally chose “all music” instead of “music with dialogue”, so you can’t hear Becky and I talking about how each carton had five Tag readers, five cases with two books, three Tag Juniors, and three cases with five books. She was THRILLED.

The best part is, for agreeing to be in a short video, Becky and the Delta Township District Library will be getting additional books for their Tag library from Leapfrog! I’m sure Leapfrog will understand it’s not Becky’s fault that I messed up the video upload

Leapfrog also sent me a smaller daycare center-size carton containing one Tag Reader with a case of books and one Tag Junior with a case of books.  While I was delivering the library kits, it happened to be Tuesday when the library has children’s story hour and crafts, and Rainbow Child Care, a local daycare center, was there. I approached one of the adults and asked if I could gift her center with the daycare kit and she happily said yes!   My son Nathan shot the video while Kathy and I unpacked the box and talked about what was in it, but because she couldn’t leave the kids alone and they couldn’t appear in the video without permission, it ended up mostly being a video of me.

I’m pretty much a disaster at video. Rainbow Child Care will get additional books from Leapfrog for agreeing to do the video. Thanks Leapfrog!

Now, I still have two cartons of Tag Readers left in my (very tightly locked) garage.  My plan is to give one to Windemere View Elementary that has an excellent after-school program for kids from K through 4th grade.  The second carton will go to Winans Elementary, which runs a summer daycare-type program for K-4 as well.   I’ll try my best to get decent video at both places so they can get more books from Leapfrog

I hope Leapfrog knows just how much I appreciated this opportunity. It’s wonderful to do giveaways and give hot new products away to readers, but being able to give products directly to places in my community, knowing that people who live right here are going to benefit? That is a really, really good feeling. I was honored to be asked to represent Leapfrog and I’ll be happy to help them again any time.