OP,
Adopt them all, then you will have a full control over their lives.
@FallGirl These are kids under the special education umbrella. Unfortunately they may not all read at some point. We do not know what disabilities qualified them for an Individual Education Plan (IEP) under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). OP (who is employed there part time and sees them an hour a week) needs to check with the administration of the school before she takes anything upon herself when dealing with kids with an IEP, which have special protections under the law.
Send the books!
@twicearound. I am aware of that, but I still say send the books.
I agree that the OP should check with the administration before doing anything. I think that is always a good policy 
@maya54 OP is referring to special needs kids (IEPs are for children with identified disabilities). These kids may be low SES but we do not have that information so the response about SES and working parents confuses me. Disabilities don’t discriminate.
http://www.naeyc.org/tyc/article/the-word-gap
I have to say that I am suprised by the number of people who think giving books is an answer. It is the easy part of the equation, but books are just paper if people don’t know how to read in appropriate ways to children. Story telling is a practice skill. Just this month, I had a refugee literacy center tell me they didn’t have any use for more books. They needed volunteers to help with reading. Books are wonderful, but . . .
Studies show that by 3 years there is a 30 million word gap between what is heard by poor and upper class children (see above). I think the most effective move is to let poor parents know theimportance talking to their children. Tired or not, one can talk about anything with little children.
eastcoascrazy: I was told this by the child.s teacher.
To be fair, I taught affluent children who also knew very little as they watched too much TV, and their nannies did not speak English. I realize that children can be neglected in all kinds of families.
So it sounds like your bias is really against parents who use TV. That bias is something that you will need to work on when you work with the public. Not your job to judge @fauxmaven .
A thought – my son’s 1st grade classroom has a “store” where they can “shop” for a book to bring home for a week or two, and the kids LOVE it. They bring it back and the following Friday they get to shop again. It’s a treat. There are all types and levels of books. I’m a huge believer in just getting the kids reading, no matter what it is.
Because it’s part of the classroom curriculum and it makes the kids happy (if you sell it right) I can’t imagine anyone being insulted.
Again the OP works with preschool children who have an IEP and are considered to have special needs. Why the assumption that these children are not being read to or talked to at home? With certain disabling conditions, no amount of reading to a child is going to correct the condition . Just out of curiosity @fauxmaven , are you an experienced resource teacher or a new graduate with limited experience with the special needs population?
I am 62 with many years of experience of working with preschoolers. It is only a portion of the children who sit in front of the TV.
I don’t challenge your years of experience. But again I ask…are you the professional in charge of the instruction…or are you a teaching assistant?
Where I worked, a teaching assistant would not have sent home ANYTHING…not even a nice book…wothout the approval of the special education and general eduction teaching staff, and the administration.
In addition, I would suggest that IF you choose to do this, you send a book home with EVERY student you see, not just the ones you perceive as being neglected in front of the TV.
Are you reading to the kids during the school day? Giving them books to own seems secondary to exposing them in the first place.
I know this is complicated.
How do you know nobody is reading or talking with these children, or that the parents park them in front of the TV when they’re not in school? My youngest is dyslexic, dyscalculic, and dysgraphic. When she was 8 her standardized test scores were in the single digits, yet I was working with her for hours every single day. I’d have been livid if someone sent her home with a book based on the assumption that she was struggling because I wasn’t doing enough. The message I’d have heard is that if, somehow, I had only done more – read to her more – talked with her more – she wouldn’t have those struggles and it’s not a message I’d have appreciated hearing.
Why do you want to send the children home with one book? I understand that you want to encourage reading, but your underlying assumption seems to be that the families don’t have access to books, they don’t understand the importance of reading, they just don’t care, or a combination of the above. A single book won’t resolve those issues.
If your concern is that the families don’t have access to books, providing one won’t address the core issue. Surely your community has libraries. If the families are low income, that’s the best place to get books. You could send the parents regular updates on local library events. It’s easier to schedule library time if it’s tied to an event, and an added bonus is that librarians are generally really good at getting kids excited about reading.
If you think the families don’t understand the importance of reading, that’s something the teachers should be explaining during parent/teacher conferences. If parents who don’t care, there’s not much you can do about that.
What you might do, with your supervisor’s approval, is print out worksheets targeted to each child with things to read that would reinforce whatever skill you’re working on with that child. It’s more work than going out and buying a bunch of books, but I think would be more helpful in the long run.
^^ Like @austinmshauri - I would have been really insulted if some teacher assistant / resource teacher assumed I was some truly slacker parent because my child had an IEP. Seriously? Do you know what it takes to get a child an IEP? Lots of advocating and tests and more advocating. School administrators don’t just slap this onto low-income children; in fact, relatively few low-income children get IEPs because their parents don’t have the time nor money to push for testing or in some cases, pay for testing.
My oldest was slow to read. She wasn’t reading in preschool or kindergarten and barely reading on grade level in first and second grades. It wasn’t because we didn’t give her books or neglected to read to her, parking her in front of a TV. We read multiple times a day (she kept asking); we played the Harry Potter books on CD (great narrator). We finally had her tested and then hired a Wilson Language tutor who worked with her for six months before getting any results. Sending a book home would have done absolutely nothing. We had plenty of books.
Having books available is great. Sending books home when you’re not quite sure what’s going on is presumptuous.
I must’ve missed this somewhere in the thread, but where did OP say these preschoolers had IEPs?
@Agentninetynine The original post says it.
Yep @LostTexan. Skipped right over that.
Both of my kids had IEPs. I would not have been insulted to get a book even though our home was filled with them. I guess I would have assumed that the teachers thought THIS book was appropriate for THIS child. I would have taken it as “this is what we are working on in school” information. And a gift to my child. Sometimes their therapists did give them gifts, usually something they needed to work on like a sorting ball, a book, a puzzle.
I had one who loved to be read to, loved to look though books by herself even before she could read. What she didn’t like was coloring so a coloring book or workbook would have been good for her, especially if she had assigned pages to return. Teachers could make her do thing I couldn’t. Her therapist had her coloring and working with clay and penmanship, but I couldn’t get her to do any of that at home.
My second child loved books too. She liked to stack them and line them up and organize them. She liked to buy them. She liked it when they were all the same size and color. She did not like to open them or have me read them or let anyone else touch them. If a teacher had sent home a book that actually got her to read it, I would have been thrilled.