UW-Whitewater's Early Childhood Conference: April 8-9, 2016

Hello all! Hopefully I will return to my regularly scheduled blogging soon. I have quite a few drafts that are just waiting for some much needed attention.

If you live in the Wisconsin/Illinois area I wanted to put a conference on your radar. It's a conference dedicated to Early Childhood! It's primarily day care providers who attend this conference, but I went last year and it was amazing.

Registration isn't outrageous, and there are some great sessions being offered. You can check out all of the different sessions here, and even find mine. I'll be talking all about programming with babies and toddlers in childcare and library settings. I hope to see some of you there!

Babies Need Words Every Day- The Blog Tour!

I'm excited to share the schedule for the amazing Babies Need Words Every Day blog tour! Some amazing ladies are going to be blogging about Babies Need Words Every Day, an ALSC initiative focused on bridging the 30 Million Word Gap, by providing caregivers with proven ways to build their children's literacy skills.

The initiative includes eight beautiful posters that share simple rhymes and tips for caregivers to read. There's even a booklist that shares some great books to check out at the library. The best part is that everything is FREE! You can print out as many posters and booklists as you want, and hang them everywhere. Check out the link here to get started.

I'll be updating this schedule daily to include the newest posts!

Monday

Show Me Librarian
Hafuboti

Tuesday
Storytime Secrets
Storytime Katie

Wednesday
Abby the Librarian
Miss Meg's Storytime

Thursday
Fat Girl Reading
Bryce Don't Play
Read Sing Play

Friday
ALSC Blog
Storytime Underground

Early Literacy Center - A Monster Who Loves Cookies!

To go along with our newest bakery theme in our Play & Learn area, we wanted to make a fun tactile experience for little ones. After scouring the web and Pinterest, we realized that Cookie Monster was the obvious choice.

The La Crosse Public Library has been fortunate enough to receive a grant through DPI and Americorp. The grant provides the library with two workers who focus on early literacy and community building for a full year. This grant has been amazing and I'll give all the details in a later post. I'm mentioning it now because they did the work on this Play & Read theme and deserve the credit. 

For this project we re-purposed our plastic mailbox that we've used previously in our Early Literacy Center, and simply added a few decorations. The mailbox just so happened to be the perfect shade of blue!

We made laminated card stock cookies and turned our wall activity into both a color identification game and sorting activity.

In various places on the wall we included prompts for the caregivers and children to interact with Cookie Monster.

Of course, we also included an early literacy tip for caregivers. Explaining why these simple activities matter plays such an important part in early literacy awareness.

Best of all, this activity was free! We re-purposed everything from earlier Play & Learn activities, so the only new thing we needed to add was the construction paper on the mailbox and the fun cookies. 

Play, Baby, Play! - Play Around at the Library!

During our most recent storytime break, I decided to hold some fun play groups at the library. I held them two weeks in a row during our normal storytime hour and they were a hit! For more fun activities, check out everything Kendra over at Read, Sing, Play does with her babies!

Each week I set out a variety of activities for the caregivers to engage in with their children. I tried to make sure that the majority of activity stations I provided were cheap and could be easily reproduced at home. The goal of the program was to encourage caregivers to play with their children, and hopefully continue that play at home. 

One of the most popular stations was our scarves station. I wrapped tissue boxes in paper and stuffed them full of scarves. Toddlers pulled out the scarves, pushed them back in, and repeated for a long time. Eventually they also realized they could unwrap the boxes too. Even after the first one was unwrapped and it was revealed to be a tissue box, they still shouted "SURPRISE!" every time a new one was opened. Kids are just the best. 

The bubble wrap wall is everything!

The bubble wrap wall was also crazy popular with both kids and caregivers. While some kids preferred stomping on it, others chose to roll. More kids then I expected decided to delicately pop the bubbles throughout the whole program.

This is a perfect stations for infants too. I heard amazing conversations happening at the wall about sounds and textures. Start saving your bubble wrap now!

Of course, this station was also pretty fabulous. I purchased the pool and the ball pit balls on Amazon, and filled up a blow up pool. I also added cushions to the bottom of the pool because I imagined littles jumping in head first and hitting the hard floor beneath. It was a good decision. I had one kid who literally laid in the pool for an entire hour. Multiple caregivers have come in to share pictures of their own pool pit at home!

For this station I simply taped ribbon to the bottom or a table and box. It was a fun tactile experience for little ones as they crawled though it. It is also great for imaginative play! Within the first ten minutes it quickly became a "car wash" with children lining up to go through the wash.

I had a variety of sensory bottles for littles to explore at one station. I had different objects in each bottle and kids loved shaking them up and watching the changes.

I also included these sensory writing bags as an activity. For more information on these, check out my blog post here.

Obviously I had to have a station with shaky eggs and dancing ribbons. The dance party music played at a reasonable volume during the entirety of the program.

And of course I had a station of comfy bean bags and books for caregivers to read with their kids.

This was such a fun program! Other than the ball pit balls (which are obviously reusable), we already owned all of the supplies. We had over 50 participants at each program and numerous requests to add more in the future. It was non-staff intensive, since the stations were meant to be done at everyone's own pace. It allowed our storytime families a chance to chat with one another, plus it helped our circulation on non-storytime weeks. 

Early Literacy Messages in Action!

When the lovely Lindsay from Jbrary started tweeting about organizing a blog tour for early literacy tips, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. I started brainstorming ideas and trying to decide what I wanted to say. There is so much that I love to say about early literacy, and it can be hard to get it all in one blog post. 

I decided to do a top 5 list (because I'm obsessed with lists) of things I wish I knew about early literacy tips when I first became a librarian. 

1. Make it fun! I think this is the most important thing to keep in mind when sharing early literacy tips. If caregivers feel like they're being lectured, or spoken down to, then they're not going to pay attention to you. Or worse, they're going to feel like you don't respect them and their parenting choices. I share "Fun Facts!" with my caregivers instead of calling them early literacy tips. To me this makes it seem less like a student/teacher relationship and more "We're all friends!".

Also, make sure the tips you're sharing are fun. No one, other than your other librarian friends, want to hear all about the statistical data you found. Instead, I always try to make it short and sweet. My goal is to give them useful knowledge that they'll remember and also share with their caregiver friends.

For example, because of all the Jurassic World excitement, I read a dinosaur book at my under 2's storytime. The book "Dinosaurs" by Simms Taback includes the name of real dinosaurs like Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Brachiosaurus. After reading a few pages my "Fun Fact!" was, "Saying the name of hard words and not simply skipping them is really important for little ones. While saying scientific names of dinosaurs might seem silly, you're building their vocabulary!"

2. Interact with your caregivers. A great way to make your early literacy interactions less awkward is to know your audience! Talk to them before and after storytimes. I start each storytime with introductions and this usually breaks the ice with the group. Also, you might be surprised by how many questions your caregivers have for you. Questions that might even lead you to your next "fun fact" to share at storytime!

3. It's ok to not have a tip in every single storytime. This is so important! Don't feel pressure to give out an early literacy tip at every single storytime. Especially if you are working in a new place, age group, etc.

Read your crowd. If it's going to seem awkward or forced then just skip it that week. If two kids in the room are howling and another one is running in circles, maybe it's time to start a song instead. You can always try to insert a tip later if the timing seems right.

You can also completely change the tip you were going to share. One week I had planned to talk about colors, but when I lost my voice due to allergies I decided to talk about singing instead. "Singing, even if you think your voice is the worst, is a great way to bond with your little one. Your child loves your voice, and they don't care if you have perfect pitch!"

4. You're allowed to give tips if you're not a parent. This was a hard one for me at first. While I love my job and love researching early literacy, I don't have any children. Why would caregivers listen while I tell them how to raise their child? The key is that you're not telling them how to raise their child. You're simply giving them information about how to develop the skills their child needs to get ready for reading and writing. You're never judging their parenting or telling them they're doing something wrong!

5. Be confident in your knowledge. There's a reason you're doing your job! You're an expert! Make sure you know the information that you're sharing with your caregivers. Research it and make sure there is information to back it up. Plus, really delving into the research behind your early literacy tips will just make you more knowledgeable about the topic! You might even find your tip for next week's storytime while you're investigating.


How do you share early literacy messages? Tell me your tips! Also, be sure to check out a round up of all the great early literacy posts on Jbrary at the end of the week!

Play, Baby, Play! – Paper Everywhere!

Kendra has also blogged about this process, but it's so much fun that I decided to steal her idea again. Seriously, if you do nothing else this summer, bring this out at least once in your storytime. I did it last summer and parent's still talk about it! It will definitely be making another appearance this year.

First, you need to get a bunch of shredded paper. Make friends with your business manager, or simply take out all those papers in your file cabinet that you're never ever going to use. You know the ones I'm talking about. The person before you wrote out every program they did by hand and you've never looked at them. Give them a second life in this program.

After getting a good amount of paper, you need to make sure you have the cleaning up supplies ready. Get a vacuum, a broom, and a dust pan. Find a sweet naive volunteer if you're very lucky.

Do your normal storytime jam (or make it all about the parachute if you'd prefer), and then tell the parents you're going to get crazy. Warn them that it will be a total disaster area, but you don't mind the mess and you just want people to have fun. I always encourage parents that this is something that they would most likely never do at home (unless they're really cool), so they should take full advantage of it here.

I lay out the parachute, get everyone to gather around, and then warm everyone up. We do a round of peek-a-boo, Itsy-Bitsy Spider, and Row, Row, Row Your Boat– then I dump out the paper. 

Everyone freezes at first. 

  

Then it becomes a total frenzy. You can sing another song if you want, but I choose to skip it. I just let everyone play with the parachute without instruction. After about 10 minutes of shaking and shrieking (the good kind), parents laid the parachute down and kids starting just playing with the paper.

We had one kid playing "SURPRISE" with the paper. A great game where you grab as much paper as your tiny hands will hold, throw them in the air, and yell "surprise". This was definitely a crowd favorite.

We had kids who wanted to see how much paper they could put on their head and their entire bodies. I had a parent come back a week later and say she found handfuls of paper in both her child's pockets and her own.  

After 30 minutes of chaos, I had to shoo everyone out so I could do a quick clean-up for my next storytime. I did the best I could and the next session came. After a great time was had by all, I started the real clean up. It took about an hour to clean up the entire room. 

It was totally worth it. So, why do we do a program like this? Using the parachute is a great way to build those core muscles, Grabbing tiny shreds of paper improves fine motor skills. The "SURPRISE" game involved imaginative storytelling because it eventually became all about a surprise birthday party. Also, it's just a lot of fun. 

Summer Reading Program for Babies & Preschoolers

At La Crosse Public Library, we have a rocking Summer Reading Program. We typically sign up around 1,500 kids of varying ages and we have 3 different programs to choose from. One for preschoolers (anyone under the age of 4), elementary school kids (up to 5th grade), and teens (6th grade and up).

When I first came to La Crosse we did The Rubber Ducky Club. A handout was given to caregivers with 6 early literacy activities on it and they were encouraged to come back at the beginning of the month for another sheet and a rubber ducky. While this is a great program, it had been the same format for three years in a row and was starting to feel stale. I knew that next summer I wanted to make some changes.

SRP 2014 Game Card

Last year, instead of having preschoolers and their caregivers visit us once a month, I decided to make a fun game card encouraging two visits each month. On each visit they received a rhyme card to add to their collection. They qualified for a book after two visits, and usually we would see a drop in participation after that. Some caregivers found the game sheet confusing, and it definitely wasn't the most patron friendly. Participation was ok, but it still wasn't quite what I wanted.

Luckily, my lovely boss let me change the program again this year. Introducing the new and improved Summer Reading Program for little ones!

I chose to model the program directly with our school aged SRP. We sign the little one up and hand out a simple half sheets with 4 unique early literacy activities to complete each week. 

A fun activity for caregivers and children to do together, such as a maze or coloring, is on the other side. We have 10 weeks of SRP this year, so there are 10 different sheets to encourage weekly visits. We simply change the sheets out every Monday. They need to complete at least 4 sheets to earn their free book, and now they have an official reason to come in and check out books each week!

On each return visit children are given a sticker to cover our featured villain of the month and help save the library!

Here is a closer look at a few of the half-sheets. Happy Summer Reading everyone!

Play, Baby, Play! – Draw On Your Babies

Last year during ALA Annual 2014, Kendra (from the blog Read Sing Play) and I presented an Ignite session all about playing with babies at the library. It remains to this day one of my favorite presentations. After talking about it for months, we decided to start blogging about all of our crazy ideas for babies! We're calling this new series, "Play, Baby, Play!"

This week, I'm copying directly from Kendra's great post about drawing on baby's faces.  I always try to do something special for our last storytime of each session, and I knew my group would love this activity.

I encouraged the parents that I have tried this on myself and multiple babies and I promise it'll wipe off. There are always looks of disbelief that this will actually work. Simply pull out washable markers and baby wipes. It really does work, I swear. Usually once one parent is brave enough to try others join in.

We got some really funny faces this time.

We also got some brave parents who let their children draw on them!

 

We had one artist who was so into it that she took over the drawing all herself.

So, why do we do this in storytime? It's a great activity to use with the "talking" skill. I always encourage parents to describe to their child what they're drawing and use descriptive words like bumpy and smooth. It's also a fun way to play! Plus, by the end of storytime parents and babies alike were all giggling over how silly everyone looked.

Also, I always keep a stash of paper plates for kids to scribble on in case the parents or kids are not feeling the face drawing, or for little ones with skin allergies.

So, how do you play with babies at your library? Tell me about it!

My Favorite Things: Top 5 Early Literacy Sites

Today is all about my favorite early literacy websites! These are sites I check on a regular basis to make sure I'm staying up to date on early literacy and child development. These are also the sites that I refer caregivers to when they are looking for more information. 

5. The Center for Early Literacy Learning

This is a site that is great for basic information about literacy, as well as research based results. Some of their link compilations haven't been updated in a few years, but they are still full of great information. I'd check this site out when you are looking for a more in-depth research about early literacy. 

4. Reading is Fundamental

This is a great site for all kinds of literacy information. The "Worth a Read" section is usually where I start on this site. It's a news feed for all the latest literacy information. 

3. Growing Wisconsin Readers

This is our state's early literacy initiative that is near and dear to my heart. It is all about getting information into the hand of people who need it the most. They have a great blog to follow, as well as a great section for librarians. 

2. Zero to Three

This website has so much information! I can literally spend hours on here. Check here if you're looking for more developmental information, information to share with your caregivers, 

1. Reading Rockets

This website has everything you could ever need. There is information about early literacy, but there's also a ton of information about literacy for all ages. They have book lists, information about struggling readers, great videos showing literacy in action, and so much more!