Elementary Schools

Get a jump on your holiday shopping, and get excited about reading at Pleasant Valley Elementary School's 2009 Book Fair—Destination Book Fair: Read Around the World. Organized in cooperation with Scholastic, the Book Fair offers hundreds of different titles for all ages—even parents, with many at bargain prices, in both paperback and hardcover. Popular titles and series include Flat Stanley, Magic Tree House, I Spy, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and more.

Destination Book Fair takes place from November 16 through 20 in the multi-purpose room at Novato's Pleasant Valley Elementary School, located at 755 Sutro Avenue (between Center and Vineyard Roads). Hours are Monday-Thursday 8 am to 2 pm and Friday from 8 am to 1 pm, with a family shopping night on Wednesday, November 18 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. The Fair is open to the public, and inexpensive Scholastic books made great gifts and stocking stuffers.

Books may be purchased with cash, check, or credit card, and all proceeds go to support the school. You can also purchase books to donate directly to the school library and classrooms.

“Come si dice?” “Comment le dit-on?” “How do you say it?”

Take a look at any local parenting website, newsletter, or newspaper and you’ll see plenty of ads for language enrichment programs for kids. What is this increasingly popular phenomenon and why should you take advantage of it?

According to neurobiologists, the human brain is “hardwired” to learn languages as an infant and toddler. Any language learned during this period is stored, literally, in a different part of the brain than language acquired later in life, and in the right environment young children can learn up to four languages without significant slowdown. No kidding. At this age the brain has a limited-time-only specialized plasticity to form the neural pathways necessary for easily and naturally absorbing multiple languages. This ability starts to taper by age three or four and is diminished by puberty. Ironically, high school is the age at which American children have historically been first formally exposed to a second language. Ask anyone who’s ever taken 9th grade Spanish how naturally and easily it came to them.