PROMOTING READING OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM: Thomasville City Schools set up a table full of books for all ages at the Literacy Fair on Thursday night.

THOMASVILLE- Literacy for Thomas County hosted their annual Literacy Fair at the Thomas County Public Library on Thursday afternoon, providing books, educational materials and literature to kids of all ages and their parents.

Andy Semones, Secretary for Literacy for Thomas County said the Literacy Fair is a collaborative effort.

“We partner with the school districts and they provide a lot of other materials,” Semones said. “Literacy goes way beyond just reading a book.”

Addition and subtraction workbooks, handouts on financial literacy and more were all available to the kids and their guardians during the fair.

“The plan is to obviously get stuff for the kids, but some of the adults need this information too,” Semones explained. “We want to hit all of the ages.”

Literacy for Thomas County was set up with a table of books that ranged from pre-primary books to high school age, chapter books.

In addition to handouts, kids were encouraged to visit the children’s area, where both high school football mascots were waiting, along with student volunteers to play ELA (English/Language Arts) games with the kids.

“It’s all games related to literacy; it may be phonics related or fishing for letters, trying to spell a word,” he said.

Kids loved the games, while parents were able to interact and ask questions about resources to help get their children reading.

Semones was very pleased with the turnout.

“We were kinda worried at first, but it was amazing,” he said. “When we opened the doors at 5 p.m., people were already lined up.”

Semones said in years past, the Literacy Fair would see between 700-750 people. In order to get a better and more firm count this year, a table was stationed in front of the library collecting individuals’ names and encouraging them to scan a QR code for a post-fair survey.