Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Flipping over a Collaboration Between Children's Museum of Houston and Houston Public LIbrary


Link to November 23 Houston Chronicle article, "Houston's FLIP a fun way to learn. 'Preschool in a box' is how one happy mother describes the tool".

Excerpt: Lisa Salazar home-schools two of her four children and admits that sometimes she's at a loss to make their lessons interesting. That is until now.

Recently, she discovered a new teaching tool that she and her children love, the Family Literacy Involvement Program or FLIP.

"It's like preschool in a box," Salazar said.

Salazar said she learned about the program through an e-mail she received during the summer and signed up to be a test family. The Children's Museum of Houston, in association with Houston public libraries, launched the program after success with kits that were available at the museum.

The program consists of award-winning children's books along with associated activities that are put together into kits. There are about 200 kits, and the subjects range from math and science to culture lessons and self-esteem development.

"The topics vary from animals to global cuisine," said Heidi Daniel, library youth services programming administrator.

Since FLIP became available at 35 libraries in Houston, the program kits have been a big hit.
"They are so popular," said Cheryl McCallum, the museum's director of education. "We can't even keep them on the shelves."

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