Many thanks to Valerie Spooner, the new youth services librarian at the Rusk County Community Library in Ladysmith. Valerie comes to libraries from a rich early childhood background, and she took the time to send us a blog post about her first storytime!
Today was my first storytime so I wanted to do something simple and easy. We talked about book care and created a poster to hang in the children’s area of the library. Here’s an outline of what I did with links 🙂
- I introduced our opening song (Hands Go Up), we sang it twice
- I introduced myself to the kids and families and I said hello to each of the children – I had nametags at the entrance, so I was able to call everyone by name.
- I told the kids what we would be doing
- I read Mr. Wiggle’s Book by Paula Craig and we talked about it as we went
- I read Read It, Don’t Eat It! By Ian Schoenherr and we talked about it as we went
- I introduced the poster activity. Since we could only have four children at a time working on the poster, I also had some book care booksmarks for them to color while they were waiting their turn.
- After everyone was done painting, I called them back to the storytime squares and sang the Listening Rules Song from the Second Step Early Learning Kit
- I read Forest Friends go to School. They really liked this – maybe because it was so similar to the Mr. Wiggle book so they knew what to expect, or maybe because they could tell that the writing, stickers, etc. were real.
- I thanked them for coming, then I introduced our closing song (Tickle the Clouds), and we sang it twice http://laptimesongs.com/tickle-the-clouds/
It seems like a lot, but it filled our 30 minutes perfectly.