September is a busy month as new children begin and many children transition to older age classrooms. There are lots of adjustments and fun new experiences to enjoy. We welcome many new families to our center. This year is off to a great start and I thank our teachers for their hard work.

September is also the beginning of the annual United Way campaign. This year's campaign kicked off at a fun event at the Holiday Inn Wednesday, Sept. 24. This year's campaign chair is Jim Courtney, retiring director of the YMCA and the campaign theme is “Live United - Give United.” The campaign cabinet volunteers joined Courtney at the culmination of the evening with the announcement that this year's goal is $1,380,000.

Neighborhood House is just one of the 23 local agencies which receive United Way funding. These agencies truly provide essential services for all age groups in our community, from infants to senior citizens.

I know firsthand how vitally important to our operating budget our United Way allocation is, and our board and staff work very hard to be worthy of this support. If your workplace runs a campaign, please consider making a gift this year. If you are a past donor, I thank you and ask that you consider increasing your gift. Neighborhood House employees will run our own campaign this month, and our goal is to have 100 percent participation. We hope that every single staff member will be a donor to this year's campaign.

This month, we prepared for a wonderful event that took place Thursday. Neighborhood House joined in the national effort to Read for the Record. The goal was for the largest number of people ever to read the same book on the same day to bring attention to the importance of early literacy education and to get books in the hands of young children. The single strongest correlation to future reading ability is the number of age appropriate books in a pre-school child's home, so Jumpstart, the group organizing the event, works to give books to underprivileged children.

We hope that this year's event featuring the book “Corduroy” by Don Freeman will break the record set last year, when the book was “Ferdinand” by Munro Leaf. It is not every day that we get a chance to help break a world record for such a good cause.

Each child received a copy of the book as a gift from his or her teachers. Also, they received a certificate of participation and a sticker.

The Auburn Document Center partnered with us to make these materials available for our children, and we thank them for this support.

Assemblyman Gary Finch was our scheduled special guest to read to our afternoon UPK class. He also drew the lucky winner of our raffle; which all the proceeds from will be sent to Jumpstart to help buy books for children.

Children at Neighborhood House will do lots of great button activities, including sorting, patterning, shape matching, number matching and alphabet matching. We will explore the texture of different fabrics and learn descriptive words about those textures. We will help our children understand and practice acceptance, the essential message of “Corduroy.” Our children will each create a paper button to decorate our community wall.

While taking part in the Read for the Record is a special activity, we work very hard at Neighborhood House to provide a great learning environment nearly every weekday of the year for the more than 100 infants and children entrusted to our care. With the help of our United Way funding, we can continue this important work. I send warm wishes to all readers for a happy and healthy autumn season.

Susan Jones is executive director for the Neighborhood House in Auburn.