Pursuing excellence for library service to children
I started a series last month on essential storytime skills. First, we looked at prep work that you can do to raise your confidence as a singer. Now, we’re going to look at some important ways to successfully lead groups of people in singing.
Singing is an essential element in storytime. How do you prepare?
Before I was born, my mom was a kindergarten teacher. When I was young, I remember her waking me up most mornings by singing “Good morning to you… good morning to you. We’re all in our places with sunshiny faces. Good morning to you… good morning to you.” When I started my career as a Children’s Librarian, I decided to begin each storytime with this same song. It gave me a sense of familiarity and comfort in those early days of nervous storytime presentations. In the subsequent months I began to notice the audience swaying back and forth as I sang, and it was only then that I realized I swayed as I sang too. It was our shared ritual- the singing, the swaying, the pointing at our “sunshiny” cheeks. Something we all looked forward to each week. I remember parents telling me how their child would “play” storytime at…
In the fourth day of ALA Midwinter, the themes of flexibility and planning continued with the panel, The Road Ahead: Libraries in an Uncertain Future. Speaker Zoe Dunning began her presentation by saying, “You can’t predict the future, but you can plan for it.” What a way to summarize the past year and many of the ideas of this conference! Throughout every panel that I attended in the past few days, there is an undercurrent of change happening. 2020 certainly gave us all new perspectives about how libraries can work. While sometimes we found ourselves drained thinking of how to best serve our communities, there were also pockets of light when new ideas came into focus and practice.
As a youth specialist, I don’t always prioritize reading adult books, particularly doorstopper nonfiction history books. But I’m making an exception for Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America 1619 – 2019 edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, our ALA Midwinter opening speakers.
As a children’s librarian, one of the things I miss most about pre-Covid-19 public library life is the sound of children singing—singing with others at storytime or just singing out loud as they and their adults go about their business in the library. When children sing, their joy in this activity is contagious. And it makes me especially happy because I know, thanks to the research behind the Every Child Ready to Read (ECRR) parent education initiative, that singing is not only a fun activity for children, it helps children develop important early literacy skills. Singing is one of the five practices ECRR encourages adults to use to build a child’s early literacy skills. Singing helps children: hear the sounds and syllables in words, practice the rhythms and rhymes of spoken language, learn new vocabulary words and their meaning, learn the names of the letters that make up words, discover…
Today at #alaac15 I attend a rousing Guerrilla Storytime! No matter what I try to make it to at least one per conference. I always come away with new ideas, songs, and rhymes. I also feel energized by the positivity of so many wonderful children’s librarians! (If you want to know more about Guerrilla Storytime, check out StorytimeUnderground.org.) Here are a few tips I picked up today: Looking to model using vocabulary for caregivers? Try swapping out synonyms in familiar songs and rhymes. For instance, “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” could also be sung with “sparkle”, “flicker”, or “shine.” To encourage talking is ask adults how to say a word in another language. This is especially great for caregivers who speak multiple languages. To incorporate writing try having a brainstorming session at the beginning of storytime. This is a clever way to introduce a new topic or theme, especially one that…
#alsc14 Maxim of the Day: Sometimes you’ve gotta sing outside of the shower. Take it from Gay Ducey, a speaker on the “Using Volunteers to Expand the Walls/Books for Wider Horizons” panel. She warmed up Thursday’s #alsc14 audience by asking us to stand up and sing the storytime smash hit “To Stop the Train”–several times in a row. Singing not only works with kids, but is an effective tool when leading a storytime training for adult volunteers: people loosen up, get active, and have fun. After this clever icebreaker activity, their brains are primed to soak up the content rich presentation that follows. She also emphasizes to volunteers that their storytime presentations will make a lasting impression on kids. “Storytimes are a kind of spell children need to have.” By creating this special timeless moment in a child’s life, a storytime volunteer is helping the child associate reading with fun…