Dr. Seuss’s March 2 birthday has become widely celebrated as “Read Across America Day” at schools across the nation – and Mancos joined in on Thursday.
The day kicked off with a parade at 8:30 a.m., as students, staff, and even the Mancos schools’ mascot made their way down Grand Avenue, donning red-and-white striped hats and escorted by fire engines.
The celebration continued throughout the day, as Thing 1 – aka elementary Principal Cathy Epps – toured the school to read Dr. Seuss books to different classrooms. At 10 a.m., elementary and middle school students joined together in the school cafeteria for a video-and-live performance of the Seussian classic “Horton Hears a Who” by a group of middle school students.
Reading took over the rest of the school too, with a book fair held in the elementary library, and signs promoting literacy and books posted on the walls. One alongside the library emphasized that a student who reads 20 minutes a day will be exposed to 1.8 million words per year, as opposed to a student who reads five minutes daily, exposed to 282,000 words a year, according to the Scholastic poster.
The National Education Association established the holiday in the late 1990s, deciding that the birthday of beloved children’s author Theodor Seuss Geisel – better known as Dr. Seuss – would be an appropriate date to celebrate reading in classrooms nationwide.
This year, March 2 fell on a Saturday, which is why Mancos schools celebrated a few days early on Feb. 28.
ealvero@the-journal.com