Posted on Jun 24, 2017
Our Club’s annual project is to distribute useful reference books to about 1,000 local 5th graders in 11 grammar schools in the Irvington and Kennedy High School service area of Fremont.  Each of these students received either a Dictionary, Thesaurus, or World Atlas of their very own to keep to be used at school or at home.  In some cases, these may be the very first book they have to call their own.
 
While books may seem “old school” in this day and age, they are a valuable and convenient tool that students can use to develop increased literacy.  This is most helpful to build the needed skills to express oneself, encourage a curiosity for learning, and succeed later in life.
Our Club has received many letters from students conveying their thanks for these precious gifts. Some are as follows:
 
"Thank you for coming to our school.  This is the first time getting one (thesaurus) I can keep.  I am truly grateful."
 
"Thank you for donating the Webster's Thesaurus.  Also thank you for having patience and taking your own time to bring us these present.  It is very generous of you donating these expensive ones and not the cheap ones that rip apart easily."
 
"I really think this is something I can use for making my writing better.  I will try to keep this for as long as I can to make my writing smoother."
 
"It helps me get my vocabulary better and better.  Also I get better grades on vocabulary charts."
 
"Thank you so much for the thesaurus.  My teacher is very picky on not using boring words such as fun, sad, and happy.  With this thesaurus I don't have to take a lot of time to replace words my teacher doesn't like.  Also, this thesaurus is more recent than my teacher's thesaurus so I prefer mine more. I appreciate that you took the time to buy costly and recent thesauruses for all of fifth grade and I believe I speak for all of fifth grade when I say that."