Luca McFarlin completed a huge milestone for a 2-year-old toddler. With the help of his family, McFarlin read 1,000 books and became the sixth child to accomplish the 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten Challenge presented by the city of Santa Clarita libraries.
New mommy Vanessa Zanders, McFarlin’s mom, was looking for enrichment programs so she could meet and create connections with other local moms and help her son make friends. She began to attend Storytime, a weekly activity held at all three library branches in the city.
As McFarlin got a bit older and came out of his shell, Zanders took the opportunity to try to accomplish the small challenge, which aims at exposing children to literacy, increase school success and develop a lifelong love of learning.
But how exactly did Zanders help her son accomplish the challenge?
She placed books everywhere so when McFarlin’s natural curiosity took over, he could easily grab a book and take it to his mom so they could read it together.
“He’s the type of kid that if you just say, ‘OK we’re going to read now,’ he’s not going to be into it. He has to want to do it himself,” said Zanders “There’s books pretty much everywhere … So whenever he was looking for something to do, a book was [close by].”
Some places McFarlin would get his tiny hands on a book were in his play area, bathroom, bedroom and car.
But not all the books were read just by the mommy-and-son duo. McFarlin’s grandparents and his dad, Derrick McFarlin, also helped him accomplish the challenge on different occasions.
Zanders’ parents, who are also first-time grandparents, haven’t had a toddler in their home in a very long time.
While Zanders went off to work throughout the week, her parents helped out with babysitting but “it’s been a while since they’ve had a baby and they were running out of things to do with him,” said Zanders as she laughed.
She introduced her parents to the challenge and every time they finished a new book, they would take a photo so Zanders could then log it onto the Beanstack app, where participants of the challenge track the number of books they have read.
“It was a family effort and everyone was excited about it,” she said. “They were just like ‘OK what number is he at?’ And I would say ‘200!’ and they [would respond] ‘OK we’ll read more books today!”
McFarlin read all different kinds of children’s books with his family, but his favorite series was “The Little Blue Truck,” by Alice Schertle and Jill McElmurry. The series explores rhymes and rhythms simultaneously, highlighting country life and farm animals.
It was the first place where McFarlin learned animal sounds and, eventually, he began to imitate them, truly showing Zanders that her son, as young as he may be, was paying attention and learning during their reading time.
“I just couldn’t believe his attention. He has such a short attention span with a lot of things, but with books, I was just so in awe of how he could really hold his attention,” she said. “He would just be really into the books, listening, looking at the pictures, making the sounds and [witnessing] his ability to focus and sustain his attention was really fascinating.”
McFarlin also developed the ability to form small sentences and more complex words throughout the challenge.
“I can only attribute it from the books he’s been exposed to. It’s amazing how much it’s helped with his vocabulary and his speech and confidence when he’s talking,” she said. “It’s really cool to see.”
For more information about the 1000 Books Before Kindergarten Challenge, visit www.santaclaritalibrary.com/2023/10/05/1000-books-before-kindergarten.
