Category: Programming Ideas

Blogger Jonathan Dolce

Hispanic Heritage Month 2018! İCelebramos!

| Jonathan Dolce|Leave a comment

Hispanic Heritage Month is here! Let’s celebrate!  Hispanic Heritage Month comes every year, from September 15 to October 15.  There’s tons we can do to celebrate, include our Hispanic patrons.  Hispanic Heritage Month is about bringing everyone together to recognize all that Hispanic Americans have brought to American culture. And WHY celebrate, you may ask? — https://www.ajc.com/news/fast-facts-hispanic-heritage-month/lzbTmY6zExcR2wAmeb24wL/ Resources for All Not sure where to begin?  Let’s start at the top!  There’s a multitude of resources for all, whether you are confident in your Spanish or not. The Library of Congress has a great page complete with its own calendar that you could adapt to your own programming.  Remember, this is about inclusion.  Make our Hispanic patrons feel welcome, and relevant!  The Library of Congress site has something for everyone.  Select from images, to multimedia, to lesson plans that are easy to adapt to children’s programming. The Smithsonian Latino Center has another…

Continue Reading
Blogger Children and Technology Committee

Engaging Families and Technology with Byte-Sized Programming

| ALSC Children and Technology committee|Leave a comment
Bee Bots, Osmos, and iPads are a great introduction to early technology.

Ready to introduce new technology, but uncertain about patron interest?  Why not try what we call “byte-sized programming”?  It introduces a variety of tech in a station-based environment.  The more stations, the more entry points you have to engage your families with tech.  You can introduce a variety of topics that appeal to all generations.  Plus, these programs are easily customized to your space, patron interests, and budget, and are held on a come-and-go basis.

Continue Reading
Blogger Maria Trivisonno

Children’s Learning Garden

| Maria Trivisonno|2 Comments

My library branch is in the middle of a food desert.  Our lower-income neighborhood has no true grocery store; instead, convenient marts and fast food restaurants abound.  Most of the children who come to the library grab snacks or fried food from the nearby gas station.   I myself am not a paragon of nutrition, but when you see even the skinniest of kids in the summer living on 2 liters of pop and off-brand hot Cheetos, you realize that the long-term effects on children’s health are very real…even if you can’t tell by simply looking at them.   We have long served lunches from our local food bank to children, but, at the prompting of our administration, we wanted to do something different—get the kids outside and gardening.  Many of our youth live in apartment buildings, so outdoor play and gardening knowledge can be hard to come by.  …

Continue Reading
Early Literacy

Stork Storytime Helps Libraries Help Families Deliver Literacy

| Guest Contributor|3 Comments
Pregnant woman reading to her "bump"

When I was a new mom, I struggled to start and maintain a daily reading routine after bringing our first child home. I knew it was important to do, but adjusting to this new little person — and all the changes that came with him — made a daily routine more hope than reality. After I began my career in library land, I saw firsthand how critical developing a love of reading and becoming proficient in it was to a child’s future success, not only in school, but in life.

Continue Reading
Blogger Katie Salo

Scarves in Storytime

| Katie Salo|2 Comments

If you don’t use scarves in storytime, I’m going to (hopefully) change your mind with this blog post. But first! Read Abby Johnson’s 2016 ALSC blog post Scarves in Storytime to get a scarves primer down. Welcome back! (You did go read Abby’s post, right?) Abby did an amazing job covering the basics of using scarves in storytime, answering questions like: “How do you hand scarves out?”, “What do you do with them?”, and “How do you put scarves?”. But what about questions regarding Using Scarves in Storytime 201? How do you keep scarves clean? A time-honored, important question to ask. After every storytime, our scarves are washed in a washing machine. Here at the library, our washing machine is a top-loader, so I do use a delicates bag to protect the delicate fabric of our scarves. After a wash, they’re line-dried on a clothesrack. If your library doesn’t have…

Continue Reading
Blogger Kaitlin Frick

Sensory Storytime: Tips and Tricks for a Successful Program

| Kaitlin Frick|Leave a comment

Have you been considering offering sensory storytimes at your library or doing outreach to a school serving children with developmental delays? Maybe the reason you’ve hesitated is because you feel unprepared. I get it: Sensory storytime can seem intimidating, with its own particular structure and style. But this is an incredibly important area of service for any library to undertake, reaching children who often otherwise feel unwelcome in a storytime space.

Continue Reading