Early Literacy Messages in Action: The why, how, and where of incorporating early literacy tips in storytime

In my almost five years doing storytimes for all ages I've found one of the hardest aspects I've had to work on is how to incorporate early literacy tips. As someone without children it always seemed a little strange giving parents advice related to their children. Over time I've realized that this is one of the most important things we do in storytime and I've become more comfortable incorporating early literacy messages in my storytimes. Because of this experience when I saw some of my wonderful Twitter friends discussing doing a blog tour on the topic I was happy to add my two cents.

The why
The biggest reason for including early literacy messages in storytime is because as children's librarians, early literacy is one of our areas of expertise. Many parents may not know the things we do about early literacy, and it is part of our job to inform them. Other parents may already know a great deal but need a gentle reminder on a busy day. Still other parents could just use a reminder that the things they already do with their children are making a difference. Providing these messages helps support all these parents. It will help them encourage their children's development in the best way possible.

Knowing that storytime specifically supports early literacy will also help parents see the reasoning behind what we do and the value behind coming to storytime. Once they realize the value of storytime the more likely parents are to bring their children to storytime and become advocates for the library in the community.

The how
The "how" is where it gets tricky. It can be difficult to put our knowledge into words without sounding judgmental or preachy. Here are some things I've learned that make it a little easier.

• Tie messages directly to what you are doing in storytime. I find this makes it feel more relevant and natural. It also gives your message a little more conversational tone.
• Include messages at different points during storytime. As Jbrary points out, messages can be woven into your opening message, before or after activities and in one on one conversation with parents.
• Word the message in a straightforward and simple way. I like the format of "When you do (insert activity) it is great for your child because (insert reason)". For instance "When you do bouncing rhymes, it is a great way for your baby to feel the rhythm of language." This not only gives concrete advice, it shows that we know parents are probably doing many of these things already.
• Provide messages in several different formats. Some librarians provide handouts at storytime or display signs around the children's department. My favorite format is including these messages on my storytime blog.
• Keep your messages varied as possible. I work in a small town, and have many regular kids who have attended storytime over long periods of time. This means I have to do my best to keep the messages I provide fresh and new.

Examples
Here are a few of my favorite tips to use:

• "Song lyrics often include unfamiliar words, which makes singing a great way to boost your child's vocabulary" 
• "Ask your baby simple questions as you read to them, even if they can't respond. The more you engage with your baby in this manner the more words they will learn to understand."
• "Your baby will learn to pay attention to their name very early on. If you use their name right before a new word, your baby is more likely to learn the new word."
• "Rhyming stories help your child identify the sounds of language. This skill becomes increasingly important as your child is learning how to read."

Where to find tips
These are just a few of my favorite places to find more examples.

• Zero to Three: This is a website of a national nonprofit organization that provides parents with great information about child development.
• Betsy Diamont Cohen's Early Literacy Kit. It includes both a handbook and tip cards.
• American Academy of Pediatrics
• Many more great resources are included on my early literacy tips Pinterest board.

For more great perspectives on this topic see the other posts in this blog tour. Jbrary has been kind enough to include them all in a a roundup post. You can also find discussion of this topic on Twitter under the hashtag #EarlyLitInAction.

Favorite Crafts for Toddlers and Preschoolers

At my library, we do crafts at toddler and preschool storytimes.

I know not every librarian does crafts at storytimes, but there are several reasons I choose to do so. First of all, coloring, gluing and other craft activities are a great way to develop a child's fine motor skills. Crafts also provide a great time for parent and child interaction. Tied in with the encouragement of interaction, creation of of a craft project also provides a tangible object to promote discussion of storytime at home.

Here are my favorite crafts to use with this age group. They are all relatively mess free, and simple to prepare. I hope you find them useful with any and all young children.

1. Collage: Collage can be done with toddlers and preschoolers in a variety of ways. It is a great form of open ended art that can be adapted for all ages. One of my favorite forms of collage to use in storytime is the magazine cut out collage. I cut out pictures related to that week's theme and let the kids create collages out of them. Stickers also make a great collage medium.

2. Torn Paper Art: All this requires is a stash of torn construction paper. Simple have the kids glue it to decorate whatever you wish. I do this a lot with animals.The only preparation is tearing the paper and printing out an outline of that week's animal.

3. Bingo Dauber Art: Bingo Daubers, or Do a Dot daubers are a great way to create a variety of open ended art projects. You can find some great printouts to use with these daubers as well.

4. Paper Plate Projects: Paper plates are one of my favorite craft supplies. They can been used in so many different ways. For instance, I've cut them in half and had the kids glue tissue paper on to make jellyfish. I've also had kids glue yarn hair and sticker eyes on paper plates to make people. This is one of my favorite crafts at an  "All About Me" storytime. Head here for more great paper plate craft ideas.

5. Yarn Art: Yarn works great to add an element of texture to any craft project. When I use it I typically cut little pieces for the kids to glue on. Depending on the project, it can be anything from "hair" to "grass".

These are just some of the common types of crafts I do with toddlers and preschoolers. I would love to learn your favorites as well!

5 Tips for Evaluating Storytime

In order to keep improving at anything you need to periodically ask yourself an important question:

In order to best serve patron's librarians must consider both the why and how of what we are doing in all programming. Storytime is no different. In order to get better at providing storytimes, you must evaluate whether things are working, or whether you need to make changes.

For the past four years I've been working as a librarian I have done this kind of evaluation informally. For instance, I'd observe behavior during storytime. Did the kids seem engaged? Were they smiling? I want the kids to enjoy storytime, so if they aren't I clearly need to make improvements.

I also would view attendance as a performance measure. Is it increasing? How big of a crowd of regular attendees is there? I want to make sure I reach as large a group as possible. I also want to know that people see the value enough to keep returning.

Based on these measures I have made changes and developed a storytime routine that seems to work well for me and my community. For instance, when baby storytime struggled I tweaked the time and format until it gained a following.

After seeing how Jbrary did a formal storytime evaluation I was inspired to go beyond these measures. A new school year and series of storytimes seemed like the perfect time to try surveying parents and getting some formal feedback.

Using questions from Jbrary's form, and other forms distributed through the ALSC listserv, I came up with two different evaluation forms. One form was passed out at storytime and asks specific questions about the program. The other was shorter, simpler and geared towards those that have children but do not attend storytime. This second survey was posted on our website and distributed through our Facebook page.

Here are a few things I've learned through this process:

1. An important first step to evaluating storytime is determining what your goals for storytime are. As the wonderful Mel Depper of Mel's Desk points out, your goals will determine the evaluation questions you ask. One of my major goals is to try to fit in more evening/weekend storytimes, so I made sure to include a question on both surveys that asks about convenient times for this.

2. When surveying families distribute surveys widely to reach those who are not able to attend storytimes. Otherwise you are getting a skewed sample. I definitely need to find more channels to distribute my survey because so far over half the respondents to my second survey have attended my storytimes.

3. When asking certain questions, make sure you provide relevant information. For instance, I should have included our hours in my questions about convenient storytime times. Some of the responses I've received back mention times outside our operating hours.

4. Allow plenty of time to receive responses back. Parents are busy and it will probably take a few reminders to get them to fill out a survey. You may not get many responses. This is where the informal evaluation can come in handy to fill in the blanks.

5. Many times evaluating will lead to further questions and more evaluating. For instance, responses to my storytime scheduling question have lead me to to wonder if I need to reschedule my morning storytime as well. I will bring this up to current families and base my decision on what I find out.

How do you evaluate storytime? I would love to hear any opinions or ideas you have on this topic!

Science Storytimes Week #1: Fizz, Boom, Move!

I decided to change my toddler and preschool storytime format a bit this summer in honor of our science based SRP theme. Inspired by some great preschool science programs done by Abby Johnson and Amy Koester I decided to replace my typical craft with science based centers.

For our first theme I choose movement. Because as they say in Madagascar...

We started out in our storytime room with a movement based picture book and songs. We also used a movement cube that I've been meaning to incorporate into storytime.

We had a decent sized group for a rainy day, and the kids clearly enjoyed getting to move around! After the typical "storytime" portion was over we moved into our large meeting room for our science centers.

Our centers included:

Move vs. Doesn't Move: Kids sorted clip art pictures into two categories: things that move and things that don't. This helps teach sorting, as well as helps children begin the early stages of identifying between living and nonliving things.

Car Painting: We did used vehicles (toy cars purchased at the dollar store) to paint tracks. I've seen this all over Pinterest and have been wanting to do it for a while. This was the most popular center by far.

Friction Ramps: I cut up some small boxes and covered some pieces of the cardboard with bumpy aluminum foil. Both covered and plain pieces of cardboard were used as ramps for kids to run cars down. The difference between the speed and smoothness of the car's ride is meant to illustrate the idea of friction.

Movement Signs: I hung up movement prompting signs throughout the meeting room. Parents were instructed to go throughout the room doing the movements suggested at each sign.

Overall, I think this storytime went pretty well. The kids enjoyed the centers, especially the car painting. I'm very glad I decided to use this format for the summer.

Next week's theme is "Fizz, Boom, Splash!" and I look forward to updating you about how it goes!

5 Reasons for Storytime Breaks

I am currently almost a week into a two week break from storytime (and other children's programming), which has made me consider some of the reasons why Children's Librarians build breaks into their storytime schedules. I've come up with five, but would love to hear any other suggestions you may have. As wonderful and important as storytime is, here is why breaks in the schedule are necessary. These are just some of the answers to the question:

1. Weeks without storytime allow staff time to work on other projects: As the only Children's Librarian at my library, I think this is a big one. During storytime breaks I have time to plan programming for other age groups. I can go through areas of my collection to see what is out of date, or write a proposal for a grant I've been meaning to write.
2. Breaks in the schedule provide time to plan additional storytimes: Right now I am planning my summer storytimes.The storytime break is allowing me to stay on top of plans for future storytimes.
3. Storytime breaks give families that attend storytimes an opportunity to participate in other activities. There are so many activities out there for kids that some are bound to conflict with storytime. Breaks give families a chance to do something different during that time frame.
   
4. Provides an opportunity to offer non-storytime programming. During storytime breaks you can offer other programs for preschoolers. I've used these breaks to have outside presenters come in or do other special programming.
   
5. Storytime breaks accommodate for weeks of predictable low storytime attendance. Most librarians build storytime breaks around weeks where there would be very few children attending storytime anyways. For instance, the last few weeks in August where everyone is fitting in that one last vacation before summer ends.

I'd love to hear any great ideas you may have for storytime scheduling or the importance of including programming breaks.

Baby Storytime Structure and Planning

For this post, I thought I'd share a little bit about how I structure and plan my baby storytimes. I always find it interesting to hear about how other children's librarians do things, so I figured sharing this information might be helpful to others.

A little background information:

• Baby Storytime is for babies under 2 years old, accompanied by their caregiver. 
• I do not require registration (mainly because we are a small town and have a smaller service population to begin with) 
• All storytimes are held in my storytime room.

Here are a few pictures of my storytime room:

A picture of our storytime tree, which was made by a local resident and transfered into this room during our recent renovations:

Here is my basic structure:

Baby Storytime always starts with our "Hello" song, which goes like this:

"(Baby's name) is here today, (Baby's name) is here today! Let's clap our hands and say "Hooray!" (Baby's name) is here today!"

Next we move on to our story. I don't have group sets of books, so I move around the room showing each individual baby the pictures.

After the story, I do a few bouncing songs. I always start with bounces because this is when the babies are most likely to be focused and still on the caregiver's lap. Towards the end some of the walkers tend to get antsy.

The rest of the stories consists of a variety of songs. I try to through in a few new songs each week, but many of the songs do repeat from week to week. Baby's thrive on repetition, so I feel it is important to their development to maintain this consistency.

I always end with the song "Bye Bye Baby" from the CD  Baby Face by Georgiana Stewart.

The final element is playtime. I put out a variety of toys and let the babies play. I think this aspect is important because it provides caregivers an opportunity to socialize. This makes it more fun for them, and more likely they'll bring the babies back to the library :)

As for planning, one of my favorite resources is Perry Public Library. They have a great pdf of songs and rhymes posted here. I also really like the ALSC website. They have helpful lists of rhymes and books. I've also gotten a lot of great ideas from other children's librarians, both in person and through listservs like PUBYAC.

Baby storytime is probably one of the most fun parts of my job. I love interacting with the babies and  caregivers and seeing how quickly they change and grow.

At the same time it is the hardest storytime to get attendance at. I have struggled to find the right time and day and recently moved it to Thursdays at 10:30 am. I'm hoping this will work better, but with babies you never know.

For more information on my storytime plans you can check out my storytime blog.