I’ve written some thoughts on storytime schedules before. While I didn’t have any answers, ultimately I ended the blog with how I was willing to change my storytime schedules to benefit my patrons. This month, I made a list of the decisions the library has made after considering our patrons needs/requests. There are more than listed (especially when the library shares its two programming rooms with a variety of inside and outside groups), but these are the things that patrons frequently thank us for: Having a combination of both registration storytimes and drop-in storytimes. All of the events with the small circle “R” are registration. The others are drop-ins. Providing each age group with at least two day choices during the week. We do our best to alternate this between M/W/F and T/R because of preschool options. Scheduling our “on our own” preschool storytime (Junior Genius) at the same time…
Author: Katie Salo
Why Take Storytime Breaks?
I’ve written before about taking storytime breaks and so have some of my fabulous ALSC colleagues. We’ve just started our winter storytime break and will be off until the week after Midwinter in January. Each day I find myself explaining to another parent or caregiver that storytime is on a break. But why take storytime breaks? Storytime breaks serve a lot of great purposes. I have two favorites, the first being that storytime breaks give me time to brainstorm and create new things. I’ve written grants during storytime breaks, created new programs, developed new circulating materials, and re-organized collections. This past week I had the pleasure of seeing several large scale projects completed and now available for our patrons to use. 1000 Books Display Our 1000 Books program was launched in September (during another storytime break!) and this month saw a new advancement for this passive program. We received partnership…
Storytime Training Bootcamp Guide
So you want to train someone to do storytime? I’m here to tell you all the secrets of storytime training. Okay. There aren’t really any secrets. But I will tell you how my library developed and successfully implemented a storytime (and programming!) training plan. I would incredibly remiss if I didn’t mention how much of this was designed and supported by my immediate supervisor and the rest of the members of the Kids and Teens department. You know who you are — thanks!! Storytime Training Plan (in four parts) Training Meeting Since we were training two staff members (who haven’t previously done storytime), my supervisor asked me to write a storytime planning guide and present it at our monthly staff meeting. I had written a similar guide when I left my previous job. I just updated it with new relevant posts to read and current library storytime procedures. I included…
Recorded Storytime Music: A Primer
While on vacation, I found myself in a store trying to pick out a movie that my sister, brother-in-law, and I would watch. Since I’ll watch pretty much anything once, I left them in the movie aisle arguing. I walked away only to discover The Ultimate Laurie Berkner Collection on the shelves of the store. I had tried to pre-order the CD a few months ago using our vendor and it wasn’t available. I immediately snatched up it up and tucked it in my basket. It was the best souvenir of my trip! It took me a long time to enjoy and use children’s music. There are so many benefits to using music, but I have a half-decent voice and got through many years just singing a capella. It took starting my Music & Movement program — Shake, Shimmy, & Dance — to really start investigating recorded music. Since I’ve…
How PBS Inadvertently Prepared Me for Librarianship
This post has been percolating in my brain since I heard Ms. Frizzle’s voice fly out of my mouth during a session of “Little Hands Art” (art class for 2-4 year olds) this summer. We were painting with ping pong balls and one of the kids put her hand in the paint. She immediately wanted to wash her hands and I challenged her to see what she could do with the paint on her hand. Without thought, the words “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” came spilling out of my mouth. While my young patron didn’t know where my words came from, they gave her the courage to use her fingers to spread the paint that day. I grew up in a golden age of PBS. And fortunately for me, I held on to PBS for far longer than my peers thanks to my little sister and my younger cousins….
Acknowledge the Moments
Last month, I spent a lot of my post talking about staying positive and trying to focus on the good during the hard months of summer reading. Today I want to talk about the flip-side. The panic-inducing room scheduling mistake or the smelly poop on the rug or the bone deep exhaustion from six programs in three days combined with the worst hayfever you’ve ever had…simply put: the bad moments. My job is amazing and I am truly blessed. But I would be a liar if I said that every moment involved sunshine, rainbows, and puppies raining from the sky. But I think that we often see the perfectly cut movie version of library life instead of the day-to-day activities from our fellow librarians. Particularly in the online arena! I try to be incredibly positive on Twitter, on my blog, and here when I’m posting for ALSC. And while I…
Summertime and the Livin’ Is…Easy?
(I couldn’t resist a good musical reference in the title. And I’m not the only one!) Youth librarians, you know what I’m talking about! For the rest of the world, summer is this blissful time to slow down. It’s the time to take vacation and enjoy summers off of school with the kids. If it’s too hot, it’s the perfect time to stay home or hit the pool/beach. Days of ice cream trucks and cut-off shorts and sprinkles and freshly mowed grass… In the library, it’s anything but easy. We’re wrangling teen volunteers and making sure that the programming room hasn’t hit room capacity and handing out band-aids and reuniting lost children/parents. The library’s air conditioner and the number of bodies in the department are constantly battling one another. You don’t know if two sweaters or a tank top are going to be your best bet for dressing comfortably. Is…
Setting Up Storytime!
The last time I talked about my storytime set-up, I was in my last library. Since then things have changed and I thought I would share my new set-up. My library has a dedicated storytime space. The room can hold up to 45 people comfortably but it definitely gets hot in there with that many bodies! I now have a long countertop that I can utilize throughout storytime, so most of my belongings are stored here, on the back wall — out of reach of toddlers! I keep everything in the same order every week so I know where everything is without looking: CD player and CDs, bag where I store my puppets, clipboard that has my outline on it, books, song cube & parent hand-outs, bubbles, and flannelboards. I try my very best to keep the bubbles hidden behind my flannelboard and easel, otherwise the kids would be demanding…