{"id":22463,"date":"2020-01-22T00:01:11","date_gmt":"2020-01-22T05:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=22463"},"modified":"2020-01-21T18:58:02","modified_gmt":"2020-01-21T23:58:02","slug":"the-power-of-playgroups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/the-power-of-playgroups\/","title":{"rendered":"Playgroups at the Library: Explore the Power of Play and Connect with Your Community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Several years ago as a response to the community\u2019s request and as part of Wilsonville Public Library \u2018s strategic plan to \u201cAdvance the Library as a community focal point and resource hub,\u201d\u00a0 the library\u2019s youth services team developed a weekly playgroup.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This program has proven to be a well-attended and a valuable resource in the community for parents and caregivers of young children to connect and for children to explore the power of play.<\/p>\n<p><em>How Playgroup works at Wilsonville Public Library<\/em>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Each Monday morning, library staff set up the library\u2019s largest meeting room with a variety of toys.\u00a0 These items for Playgroup are purchased from our library\u2019s program supplies budget.\u00a0 The following items were selected to promote growth and learning in several different areas&#8211;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Imaginative Play\n<ul>\n<li>Including Play Kitchen, Puppet Theater, Dolls<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Sensory Stimulation\n<ul>\n<li>Includes Foam Blocks and Sensory Toys<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Gross Motor Skills and Eye-Hand Coordination\n<ul>\n<li>Includes Ball Games and Floor Puzzle<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Exercise and Muscle Building\n<ul>\n<li>Includes Riding Balls and Floor Mats<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Fine Motor Skills\n<ul>\n<li>Including Blocks, A Coloring Station, and Matching Games<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Early Literacy and Reading\n<ul>\n<li>A Reading Corner with comfortable seating and plenty of books<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Parent volunteers help tremendously with the oversight of this program, and they also bring their young children with them to enjoy the playgroup fun!\u00a0 Two of our original volunteers were instrumental in getting our Playgroup started. Our wonderful volunteers support the program with the following&#8211;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Sign in parents\/caregivers and their children.<\/li>\n<li>Register parents\/caregivers new to the program, to sign a waiver to release the library from liability. Library staff keeps the completed waivers on file for the duration of Playgroup (usually the school year) so parents\/caregivers only need to complete one waiver per year.<\/li>\n<li>Pass out healthy snacks to participating children.<\/li>\n<li>Clean up after the program.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Comments from parents and caregivers about Playgroup<\/em>&#8212;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThis program has enriched my child\u2019s life. Because this program is free-form, my child has the flexibility to explore at his own pace.\u00a0 He tries out new toys and interacts with other kids.\u00a0 It\u2019s fun and safe and the healthy snack is a good feature. It also encourages him to clean up after himself. It\u2019s great to have an indoor program available for young children\u201d\u00a0 (It rains quite a bit in our area during the fall\/winter\/spring months\u2026)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThis program provides an opportunity for children from different age groups to play with each other. The program promotes different aspects of Early Literacy. And parents can meet and interact with each other.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThis program allows a lot of families to connect to one another and gives them a chance to possibly meet up outside the library. As a volunteer with my child accompanying me to playgroup, this gives my young child an opportunity to sample volunteering and being responsible.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>What we\u2019ve learned about Playgroup\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This program is relatively easy to replicate and will flex depending on what you have for space availability. In fact, Wilsonville\u2019s Playgroup moved to another location during a recent renovation of the library and adapted to that space during the renovation.<\/li>\n<li>With the support of parent volunteers, library staff involvement for this program can be fairly minimal. We look for parents\/caregivers already participating in the program as possible volunteer candidates.<\/li>\n<li>Change up the offering of toys but keep the favorites! We recently purchase new toys using funding from <a href=\"https:\/\/libguides.osl.state.or.us\/readytoreadgrant\">Oregon\u2019s Ready to Ready Grant<\/a>\u00a0 and highlighted the new toys in the \u201cDiscovery Corner\u201d of Playgroup.\u00a0 We surveyed the parents\/caregivers about the new toys and found the new toys to be very popular with caregivers and children alike.\u00a0 We were in the process of weeding out some of the toys that had been used for several years but with the suggestion of our volunteers we kept a couple these items because they were still well loved favorites.<\/li>\n<li>By offering Playgroup in our community, Wilsonville Public Library is able to meet the ALSC Competency of <em>Commitment to Client Group: Cultivating an environment for enjoyable and convenient use of library resources, specifically removing barriers to access presented by socioeconomic circumstances, culture, privilege, language, gender, ability, and other diversities.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Have fun starting up your library\u2019s Playgroup!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Josephine Caisse<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"mailto:jcaisse@wilsonvillelibrary.org\">jcaisse@wilsonvillelibrary.org<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Youth Services Librarian<\/p>\n<p>Wilsonville Public Library<\/p>\n<p>Wilsonville, Oregon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Several years ago as a response to the community\u2019s request and as part of Wilsonville Public Library \u2018s strategic plan to \u201cAdvance the Library as a community focal point and resource hub,\u201d\u00a0 the library\u2019s youth services team developed a weekly playgroup.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This program has proven to be a well-attended and a valuable resource in the community for parents and caregivers of young children to connect and for children to explore the power of play. How Playgroup works at Wilsonville Public Library&#8212; Each Monday morning, library staff set up the library\u2019s largest meeting room with a variety of toys.\u00a0 These items for Playgroup are purchased from our library\u2019s program supplies budget.\u00a0 The following items were selected to promote growth and learning in several different areas&#8211; Imaginative Play Including Play Kitchen, Puppet Theater, Dolls Sensory Stimulation Includes Foam Blocks and Sensory Toys Gross Motor Skills and Eye-Hand Coordination Includes Ball Games and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":207,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[493],"tags":[1310,1897],"class_list":["post-22463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-early-childhood-programs-and-services-committee","tag-library","tag-playgroups"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}