Last Wednesday, Eight O’Clock Coffee teamed up with First Book to host a fun-filled day of off-site learning for local second graders at Eight O’Clock Coffee’s Landover, Maryland roasting and packaging facility. At the event, Eight O’Clock also proudly announced the production of 5,000 co-branded copies of the Sesame Street Workshop book, We’re Different, We’re the Same, now available to children nationwide on the First Book Marketplace.
The day’s events included a tour of the plant and reading activities with 63 second graders from nearby Woodridge Elementary School. Students got to see what goes in to every bag of Eight O’Clock Coffee and enjoyed reading We’re Different, We’re the Same with Eight O’Clock Coffee employee volunteers. A tasty Sesame Street-themed lunch followed, and the event ended with each child taking home two brand new books in an Eight O’Clock Coffee tote bag.
“We love hosting the First Book events and spending the day with the kids—they really light up when they get new books,” says Alisa Jacoby, Senior Brand Manager at Eight O’Clock Coffee. About the book We’re Different, We’re the Same, Jacoby adds, “Having recently changed our Eight O’Clock Coffee packaging, we can relate to the idea of being different on the outside, but the same on the inside!”
Through the First Book and Eight O’Clock Coffee partnership, 580 books will be donated to Woodridge Elementary School, two for each student. Kyle Zimmer, President of First Book, commended Eight O’Clock Coffee’s efforts, “Their continued dedication to promoting literacy helps to ensure that all children have ‘the same’ educational resources and opportunities.”
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Walking into The Brooklyn Brownstone School, I couldn’t help but feel elated to see painted on the foundation of their building the following motto: “creating a community of lifelong learners.” It was a thrill to visit the class of precocious second graders! They were all very interested in my read-aloud of Mercy Watson to the Rescue. They even acted out scenes and tried to predict the ending!
We gathered in the library for reading time, I shared a bit of my history with the kids (after all, I’m a Brooklyn girl myself) and we made bookmarks shaped like a pig to tie in with the theme of the story.
My friends from Eight O’Clock Coffee and Candlewick Press provided two brand new books for each child with the help of First Book. They were heroes, donating 250 books for the school – two for every student! But, the real heroes were the children, who delighted in each word and enthusiastically participated in making crafts and story time. Once they received their books, many kids had them opened to chapter 6, the page where we last left Mercy in our read-aloud. They couldn’t wait to see what happened next.
It was a treat for me to join the students of the Brooklyn Brownstone School. I know we were able to make a difference in the next chapter of their lives.
