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 Center- Letter of the Week

Hello everyone! After a summer of resignations and retirements, I finally have a chance to write a much overdue blog post.

Today I'm going to be talking about our "Letter of the Week" we offered over the past year. We got the majority of our letter ideas from the amazing No Time For Flash Cards website.

We went through the entire alphabet, while changing the letter every Monday. We updated our bulletin board each week with new, easy to recognize items that also started with the same letter. Having kids run into the room to see what the new letter was each week was a really fun experience at the desk.

We had a great college assistant who prepped our craft each week. She cut out the letters with our Cricut machine, added any supplies we needed in separate plastic baggies (all the pom poms in one, the google eyes in another, etc), and then threw them all in a tub. Since our desk is usually pretty busy, our goal was to make the letters as easy as possible. Staff simply handed a letter to each kid and then reached into the baggies to hand out the necessary supplies. 

For the first two weeks we had kids trace and cut out their own letters instead of using the Cricut, but after observing we saw that overwhelmingly it was the caregivers doing the letter and cutting. Since we also wanted it to be as non-staff intensive as possible, taking away the scissors was appreciated by all. I know scissor usage is a great skill for littles to practice, but it wasn't feasible with our staffing. I made sure to include weekly literacy tips on the "craft table" that talked all about letters, scissor usage, etc.

The weekly activity started out with low participation and a lot of resistance from the staff (which could have had a direct correlation on participation). Some people thought it was too time consuming. Others thought that kids and caregivers just were not interested in doing a weekly craft at the library. I compromised that if patrons still were not interested by week 4, then I would come up with a different passive program. Luckily, I didn't hear a single complaint after week 3!

We soon had patrons coming in every week specifically to do the letter of the week craft. Caregivers told me they were making scrap books at home of the letters, and even creating their own letter themed weeks depending on where we were in the alphabet.

After the letter K, we consistently averaged over 50 kids a week. For a passive program, that required very little staff time, this was definitely a win in our book. If you have a volunteer that could prep the supplies each week, then it would be even better!

Seeing each unique letter made every day a little better, especially during summer reading craziness. It was a great opportunity for us to talk about process rather than product with the caregivers. One of my hesitations was having an "example" letter each week on the bulletin board. However, we stressed to caregivers to allow the kids do their own thing and that the examples were simply there to remind kids to ask for the letter craft. It helped that the "example" was on a bulletin board a good distance from the craft table. Unless caregivers got up to walk 20 feet and checked the bulletin board, they had nothing to compare their child's letter to.

Luckily, caregivers really listened to the staff's prompting and we ended up with some amazing creations! If you're looking for an easy passive idea to run (for 26 weeks!) then this is a great one. You could even leave each letter up for 2 weeks and end up with an entire year of passive crafting! We used supplies we already had in the library, with a few exceptions. In total, we spent under $20, for 26 weeks of programming that ended up with 850 participants. That's under 3 cents a craft!

Early Literacy Center- Baby Doll Doctor

To go along with the theme of "Community Helpers" for Summer Reading, I wanted to make sure I added a new table activity for little ones.

I realized having kids play doctor would be the perfect activity in our Play and Learn space. I purchased two baby dolls and a doctor's bag. If you're thinking of doing this activity, please purchase baby dolls that are different races. Just like the patrons you see every day, baby dolls come in different colors too. Out of all the positive comments I've received from this activity, parents thanking me for not just having Caucasian baby dolls have been the most abundant. Have your baby dolls reflect your community!














I added a quick prompt for caregivers and children, and simply set everything out on the table.

My biggest concern was that the baby dolls would be stolen, so they're marked with our initials throughout their clothes, as well as on their skin. We've had a few kids sneak them into strollers or just walk out with them, but the caregivers always bring them back when they see the markings. Caregivers have been very appreciative that we made it easy for them to remember where they saw the baby doll.

Kids have really enjoyed this new activity. Some kids are gentle and tell us that their baby has a fever and needs to rest. Another child told me their doll had been in a car accident and was attempting CPR. One child even became a surgeon to save the baby doll's life, while making her younger sister be the nurse. Sometimes though, the baby just has a boo-boo and needs a band-aid. The imaginative play that happens with these two baby dolls is amazing!

Overall, this was definitely a successful activity and one I would encourage all of you to do!

Early Literacy Center– Stove Top Cooking

The addition of our Farmer's Market Stand to our Play and Learn area, made me realize I wanted to incorporate cooking into the area too. I couldn't quite figure out how I wanted to accomplish it in a cheap way though. There are adorable chair cover stove tops you can buy on Etsy, if you have a spare $50-$75.

Of course, I don't have $75 to spare. Luckily, I remembered our little table in our storytime room! I quickly made heating coils and knobs using publisher and attached them to the table using contact paper. I also convinced our manager to buy this adorable set of kitchen items.

They are tiny and perfect for little ones. They even come with a convenient little basket to store all of the items when they're not being used. 

I included a handy little parent tip and play prompt to complete the new play item.

This is truly one of the greatest things we've ever put over in the play area. It works perfectly with our Farmer's Market Stand. Little ones now "purchase" all of their fruits and vegetables from the stand, and then bring them "home" to cook. I've been offered everything from mashed potatoes, to tea, to spaghetti over the past few weeks. It's adorable beyond belief, and we've heard many parents say they're going to make their own stove at home.

There's so many opportunities for vocabulary building and play with this new item. Plus, it was extremely affordable! Go make one right now. You won't regret it.

My Favorite Things: Top 5 Library Apps for Preschoolers

During my insomnia last night I had a great idea to start a new blog series called, "My Favorite Things". Each week I'll be posting about some of my favorite library related things. It could be books, apps, props, websites, or more! Stay tuned to read about a few of my favorite things. 

Today is all about my favorite library apps! If you're interested in our library iPads, check here. We lock our iPads on one app a day, but our patrons still definitely have their favorites. Here our the five apps we get requests for the most and parents tell us they download at home. 

5. Endless Alphabet

This app features different vocabulary words, with a focus on teaching letter sounds. Each letter has it's own personality and makes the correct sound as a child taps or drags it. This app has really great graphics and nice background music. 

4. The Monster at the End of this App

This is one of the best book apps ever in my opinion. There are small challenges on every other page for children to complete before turning the page. Grover's hints are helpful, and the narration is not overly annoying (a must for our room). Plus, it stays true to the original story. A must buy for your library!

3. Make it POP!

This is another great app for learning shapes, letters, numbers, and colors. This app is easy to navigate and ad-free, which is always a plus. The simple act of tapping a specific item on the screen is a great way to build hand-eye coordination, and this app is so fun! Who doesn't love popping popcorn and setting off fireworks?

2. Letter School

I downloaded this app based on all of the great reviews, and I was not disappointed! Parents love to come and talk about this app with the staff. The small rewards for the kids when they complete a letter are fun, but nothing is too flashy. It's great for developing fine motor skills (tracing) and building upper and lower case letter recognition, as well as numbers. 

1. Bugs & Buttons

 

This is a great app for little ones to play with. There are a lot of different mini-games to go through, and it's full of bugs! Letter recognition and counting are big features of this app, so caregivers can quickly see why this app is beneficial for their little ones. Any day we have this app chosen we know to expect squeals of laughter from the iPad area. The even better news is that now there's a whole line of these apps featuring number and letters specifically, and even one about bubbles!

We download new apps every few months, so expect a list of my favorite new apps soon! What apps do your preschoolers love? Any that you hate?