Distribution of
Family Literacy Resources

The Reading and Parents Program (RAPP) was developed by Kingston Literacy staff after consultation with other educational experts, in 1990.

RAPP is a very functional family literacy program which provides resources directly to parents, caregivers and their children for use in the home. It is a program that is easily transportable and has been extremely popular in both urban as well as rural locations.
The RAPP is delivered in packs consisting of five elements. These elements are, a quality children’s book, reading and language hints, poems and finger plays, a craft and finally, age appropriate activity sheets all of which reflect the theme of the story in the book.

Staff meet with parents on a one-to-one basis, usually in a playgroup setting to demonstrate the RAPP pack and its use as a tool to encourage emergent literacy in children. A selection of packs is shown, illustrating the different composition that they can take. Usually, each pack is tailor made for individual families with books that reflect the different ages of the children. A pack may contain a baby board book and a young reader in addition to the picture book chosen for that week for the group RAPP packs. The variation occurs if there happens to be more than one child in a family under the age of 7 years old. The categories that most children fit into for the purpose of RAPP are:

Over the years, the Family Literacy Centre has acquired approximately 80 sets of books. Generally, there are fifteen copies of each title so that one book is chosen for the majority of participants each visit. The centre also has many individual story books, board books and young readers. In addition, a selection of theme based books has been purchased that deal with many issues such as death, divorce, potty training and self-esteem. From time to time the Centre is able to accommodate special requests from parents who may need a book on a particular topic to help explain something to their child. These are all incorporated into the RAPP packs when necessary.

Visits are made bi-weekly to exchange and renew packs. The two week period enables families to have plenty of time to work through all the elements of the pack. A short evaluation is included with each pack and the feedback received from participants has helped to reshape and refine the program over time.

A typical introduction includes an overview of the program, including the demonstration already referred to; an opportunity for questions and then any interested parents register with only essential details such as name, contact details, names and ages of any children being asked for. Confidentiality is important because families come from diverse backgrounds and may have reasons for anonymity. However, some details are essential in order to track the resources that are lent out. Accurate record keeping helps to conserve book collections because it usually makes it easy to trace missing items.

Sometimes, this introduction is done on an individual basis especially if the person has literacy difficulties.

Following the initial visit, records are updated, RAPP packs are prepared and delivered two weeks later. A typical visit takes one hour which allows time for staff to describe the details of packs where necessary.

Preparation of packs provides an ideal volunteer opportunity. Volunteers can photocopy activity sheets, reading and language hints and prepare crafts. The craft preparation is very helpful since each family receives several crafts according to the number of children in the family. Experienced volunteers also prepare the packs. They have received orientation and training in emergent literacy as well as in basic pack preparation in order to do this.

Since transportation is often a barrier to parents receiving services in many areas, RAPP is an ideal resource. It can be transported to families in a variety of ways. Kingston Literacy has partnered with Ontario Early Years Centre staff to send RAPP out with their toy vans, volunteers have delivered the packs throughout a fairly wide radius of the centres, Lennox and Addington Resources for Children (LARC) home visitors have delivered RAPP to families with special needs who cannot attend groups. It is also collected by individuals from our centres, including the students at our adult literacy programs in Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington and of course, regular delivery by family literacy staff.

Kingston Literacy has developed five RAPP manuals to use with a wide variety of quality children’s books.

The titles are:

The Classics Collection
The Holidays Collection
The Winter and Summer Collection
The Spring and Fall Collection
The Early Years Literacy Collection

These books are for sale. See the Kingston Literacy website for prices and a sample of RAPP.