Sweetening the Literacy Pot

Out of my five children, I've got three avid readers and all are avid listeners! We're fortunate enough to be able to surround them with excellent books, and with Grandma living in a house in our back yard, there's always someone available to read to them.

It's not uncommon to find them snuggled up with each other sharing a book, either (or, ahem, fighting over a book... but I don't take pictures when that happens)! I pride myself on being able to supply them with high-quality books to satisfy their voracious appetites, but recognize what a huge privilege it is that we can do so. Did you know that most children in low-income households in the US don't have access to any age-appropriate books at home? 

Enter First Book, a charity that provides high-quality books to low-income schools and families!

We're always on the lookout for great charities to which we can give, and First Book is definitely getting added to the list - 97% of their revenue goes straight to providing books to kids in need. You can read for yourself what a tremendous impact that's having on the communities with which they're involved, but I'm convinced it's a worthy cause.

As homeschoolers, we read a lot of books. We signed up for the Book It program through Pizza Hut®, and just found out about a great new drink, Fruit Shoot®, that they'll be selling at Pizza Hut® to benefit First Book. $.05 from each Fruit Shoot® bottle sold at Pizza Hut (from November 10, 2016 to April 30, 2017) will go to First Book!

I was pretty excited to try this new drink - it seems as though every time we go out and drink anything but water, the kids either beg for soda (which they don't actually like) or chocolate milk. Fruit Shoot® has enough flavors to tempt me to try something new, and the kids all adored it! I grabbed two of each flavor to make sure we had enough, and used it to motivate them to have a little "everyday adventure" as we worked to get the garden ready for fall planting.

Can I just say how much I appreciate drinks that aren't in juice box form? No spills!!!

And they use real sugar, no corn syrup in these drinks!

After downing their Fruit Shoot® drinks, all four of the older kids were pumped and ready to clean the house and then help sort garlic and shallots for seed. They even fought over who got to use which tool to help spread manure on the garden! 

Fruit Shoot®'s slogan is "Made for Adventure" - I can definitely see us taking these along as a treat whenever we adventure outside the home. For now, since I'm nearly 38 weeks pregnant, we're sticking close to home for our adventures! 

What do you think? Would you try a Fruit Shoot® yourself? I had the Strawberry-Raspberry flavor (because I really like juice, even though I'm an adult) and it tasted great! These days most drinks are too sweet for me, but this was just right. Fruit Shoot® was developed in Europe, but is new to the US - check out their facebook page to see the summer adventures kids have been having with Fruit Shoot®! And be sure to visit the First Book website to see what great work they're doing!

Many thanks to Fruit Shoot for sponsoring this post! I was compensated for this post, but all opinions are my own, and I really do love juice!