Librarian Ginny

Storytime: Summer!

Sum, Summ, Summer! No, it’s not my favorite season, but I do love the liveliness that comes with it. My family never took big, grand vacations. If we went anywhere, it was to my Grandma’s house in Chicago. But I have vivid memories of waking up at 6am, piling seven bodies (plus luggage) into the car, and driving for 6 hours with no air conditioning. When I was really young, my mom would play car games with us, but as I grew older, it became a time to listen to my music on my Walkman and read. This is always what I will equate with Summer.

Storytime: Bees!

Bees! They are a fun topic for a summer storytime, or when you’re doing a nature/STEAM storytime. I’m pretty afraid of bees, but I know how vitally important they are to our environment, so I try not to include any of my personal hesitancy that could make the kids bias toward them, haha!

Totally Untidy Toddlers #3: Color!

One of the things I hear most often from caregivers in this program is that they’d never try some of the stuff at home because of the sheer messiness. While I totally get it, it also makes me so sad! Messy, sensory play such as this fosters curiosity, imagination, physical and mental development and exploration. When paired with an early literacy activity that the caregiver and child can experience together, it encourages language development, communication, and cognitive skills. Math skills, sorting and categorizing, cause and effect, problem-solving and experimentation are all part of the Play to Learn philosophy. So, while I understand the hesitance for many caregivers to dive in and dye 10 lbs of spaghetti, it also makes me realize how important it is for us to be running programs like this! With all that being said, are you ready for our next Totally Untidy theme? Colors! Here we go!

Storytime: Homes and Houses!

Homes and Houses is a great theme for around the holidays when people are often traveling to relatives. It brings great opportunities to talk about, and fight the stigma around, people who don’t have homes or have different homes.

Storytime: Rain and Rainbows!

It’s been raining a lot here, lately, so I decided to include that as part of my theme for my virtual storytime. For this storytime, I went heavy on the rain portion of the storytime because I adore a good rain storm! However, you can add in more rainbows easily! There are SO MANY great songs, rhymes, and books about this topic. What are some of your favorites?

MLK Day At The Library

My coworker, K, and I were put in charge of this past Martin Luther King Jr. Day for the children’s department at our library. It was my first time being in charge of this program and K and I agreed we wanted to approach it with joy, celebration, and truth. Neither K or I are black, but we’ve both been watching current events unfold and wanted to create a space for learning and relating to each other. So here’s what we did…

ECRR: Reading and Writing!

Our final post on the ECRR daily practices is Reading and Writing! Because reading and writing are tied together more tightly than any of the other five daily practices, I’m going to talk about them together. Reading and writing go together. They draw upon the same shared knowledge bases and to learn one, you have to have a foundation of the other. They both build phonological awareness, narrative skills, alphabetics, and print concepts. Even more, they work with the symbolical nature of language.

If you missed the first three daily practices, you can find them here!

Storytime: Weather!

There are a lot of components to weather, especially if you live in the Midwest like I do! Seriously, we have snow, 70 degree sun, and a tornado warning all on the same day here. That’s what makes weather a fantastic themes, though! You can talk about seasons, rain, snow, ice, wind, clouds, sun, storms, etc. So here’s a sampling of some fun weather stories and activities!

Look for future storytime posts about individual seasons, rain, snow, sun, etc!

ECRR: Playing!

Here’s another one of my favorite ECRR practices! Playing! It helps children think symbolically. A ruler becomes a magic wand. Our surroundings become prehistoric times with dinosaurs and a playmate becomes a t-rex! Their imagination is the limit! Just the act of this kind of play reinforces the code deciphering children will do later on when they’re learning to read and write.

Storytime: Soup!

Whether you’re using it as part of a sickness/illness theme or just on its own, Soup makes for a fun storytime! I have a few absolute favorites among this script, hopefully they’ll become some of your favorites, too!