Blueprint: Wii will help fight illiteracy
Athens-area college and high school students will battle for supremacy on Wii video games Saturday in the first-ever Wee Read Olympics that will earn one winner a 2003 Jeep Liberty and all will benefit a local program to combat illiteracy.
The Wee Read Olympics, scheduled to start at 9 a.m. Saturday in the Classic Center, will match any and all comers against 26 college and high school students who already have won in preliminary Wii game mini-tournaments leading up to the Olympics.
Those 26 winners come from Athens Technical College, Cedar Shoals High School, Monsignor Donovan Catholic High School, Oconee County High School, Piedmont College and the University of Georgia, said Jeanine Russell, who administers the Wee Read program in Clarke and Oconee counties for the United Way of Northeast Georgia.
Wee Read was designed to prepare young children to be ready to learn when they enter school, Russell said. The program includes three parts - educating parents, assisting parents and improving early learning.
A crucial element of the program involves mailing free, age-appropriate books each month to registered children under age 5, Russell said. Included in the mailing is a Wee Read newsletter that provides parents with tips for effective reading techniques, parenting information, local events and activities for children and a book activity page.
The first book usually sent to the children is "The Little Engine that Could," Russell said.
Currently, the program has more than 2,800 children registered in Clarke County and just under 300 in Oconee County. Children can be registered through the Clarke o
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