Blogger Kirsten Caldwell

Reading More Children’s Books

So many books, so little time! As a youth librarian doing tons of reader advisory, I want to read more of the books in our collection. Librarians know what is popular with kids, but avid readers have already read all of those. I want to be able to recommend books to everyone who comes in and I feel like I need to read more children’s books to successfully do that. I started this journey by reading some physical copies and listening to some audiobooks. Peeking through the new books and reading their summaries and their professional reviews is a great place to start. Reading a few chapters and diving into the stories we purchase for our patrons is even more helpful. I don’t do all of the ordering for our library system and don’t always know what books are coming in. If a child asks for a book about magic,…

Blogger Kirsten Caldwell

Using PBS as a Resource

I recently had the amazing experience of being a member of the PBS kids community learning cohort through PBS Wisconsin and I want to share some of the amazing resources they have available. PBS Kids PBS Kids has online games, videos, shows, and even apps that are all free to access. They are educational, simple, fun, and great for kids. I recommend this app to any parent who asks me for a good recommendation. PBS Parents PBS Parents has articles, access to all of the shows, coloring sheets, activities that have been planned that they can do with their kids, and more. They can answer some questions like what age their child is, what show they like, and what they are looking for, and PBS will present them with a list of activities! They also have a newsletter which I subscribed to because they are always sending out new and…

Blogger Kirsten Caldwell

Beginning Readers: Amazing and Challenging

Beginning readers are one of the collections I purchase for in my library and they are my favorite. I see them as the underrated collection in the childrens’ section. Even if I didn’t order them, I would still LOVE them. Beginning Readers or Early Readers are short books that are designed for children who are just learning to read independently. As amazing as they are, there is not a singular way to level these by difficulty between libraries and that can add some challenges.

Blogger Kirsten Caldwell

Baby STEAM Program for Summer

We are officially in prep mode for our summer learning program! My library is using the iRead theme: Find Your Voice. I have a great love of STEAM and we already have existing programs for older kids but haven’t had anything for babies and toddlers that is STEAM related. STEAM allows children to find their voice in different ways and we are always trying to incorporate it more into our programming. Our newest program will be a drop-in program for ages 0-3!

Blogger Kirsten Caldwell

Toddler Storytime Books

Felt brown bear brown bear characters.

We have started up our age-specific storytimes at my library and the toddler one was the toughest for me to figure out. I didn’t want to read only board books, but the books I read to preschoolers were often far too long to hold their attention. I read other blog posts and went through my library to see what picture books I thought 2-year-olds would like. These are the toddler storytime books that I have read in 2023 so far that I love.