Brilliant Book Swap

“Read, read, read” is Mr Ian’s key message that he drives forward with passion and much reasoning.  This week has been all about celebrating books; what they have to offer both children and adults.  The book swap, organised by the parent group and Ms Alicia, has been a huge success with the aim to not only share books amongst the TX community, but also to share the awe and wonder that books offer with our community partners.

During our book celebration week there have been a variety of activities and events to get us all very excited about books! One event, which has not only encouraged reading for pleasure but has also benefitted our wider community, is the TX book swap.

The idea of the book swap was to enable children to bring in any unwanted books from home and swap them for a new book which they would enjoy reading. This year, we decided to bring a greater community focus to our book swap so we introduced a ‘2 for 1’ swap where the children could bring two books and get one back. With this system we hoped to have a good amount of books left over in our collection which could be donated to some of our community partners.

First we needed to gather the books to create a collection. Luckily, parents and children rose to the challenge and found lots of lonely books who needed a loving new home. Our friends at APS were very helpful and asked the Year 7 students to also bring in books that they no longer wanted to read. Two bags of books were collected – thank you APS!

This boosted the amount of books that were suitable for our Milepost 3 children at TX tremendously. As the children added books to the collection they received a token to exchange for a new book.

Our parent group here at TX worked hard to sort the books into boxes for each milepost and set the foyer up ready for the swap. Without their hard work the swap would not have been possible. Before school this week, the parent volunteers (also helped by some Year 6 students) facilitated children exchanging their tokens for a book from the collection. There were many happy faces as children chose a book they were excited to read and rehome!

Now for the best bit; with the ‘2 for 1’ system we have been able to collect extra books which can now be donated to our community partners who are always grateful to receive books in English and Vietnamese. We will be donating books to:

• Anh Minh School for the hearing impaired
• Binh Trieu School for disadvantaged children
• Thien Phuoc home for disabled children
• Christina Noble Sunshine Centre for children with health problems and disadvantaged       children

It has been a pleasure to see so many members of our community work hard together to make the TX book swap a success. Often when we think of ways to help the community donation springs to mind. It is important, however, that not only do we find ways of donating to help our community partners but we also show willing to put our time and effort into community projects. The book swap is a fantastic example of this.
Thank you once again to everyone involved.

Alicia Day, Year 3 Teacher and Community Service Leader