Well, friends, we here at the Public Awareness Committee hope that you’ve been learning A LOT by reading the daily entries in the Babies Need Words Every Day Blog Tour this week. As a refresher, you can find a link to all of the posts here from Early Childhood Programs & Services Committee chair Brooke Newberry.
Our committee is tasked with wrapping up the blog tour by sharing some simple, high-impact ways in which you–yes, YOU!–can get these amazing resources created by the Early Childhood Programs & Services Committee out into your library and your community at large. Many of these are field-tested, so you know they’re legit. So challenge yourself to be an early literacy advocate in the next few weeks by doing one (or more!) of the following.
13 Ways to Champion Early Literacy using Babies Need Words Every Day Resources
1. Send the posters home with your storytime parents with the specific invitation to share it with a friend who can’t make it to storytime.
2. Next time you head to a preschool or daycare for an outreach visit, bring some of the posters with you for the center to hang in their halls or lobby. Bonus: Share the link to the posters so the center can print their own and send them home with families!
3. Give your local child-serving establishments a call and ask if you can bring some posters to them to display on their community boards and/or above changing tables. Bonus: Create a small banner to hand below the posters to advertise your library!
4. Think of existing service bundles that you offer to young families and add a poster and the book list to the mix. For example, the Lake Oswego Public Library has “new parent” gift bags that they give to patrons who have babies under 6 months old. Each bag contains 4 board books, a brochure about the library, and Babies Need Words Every Day literature and a poster.
5. Share the posters and other resources on your library’s social media platforms.
6. Share the link to the Babies Need Words Every Day page on your local library and early childhood listservs. Work those networking connections!
7. Share this very blog post, and the others from the tour, with your supervisor and ask that Babies Need Words Every Day be one of your initiatives for 2016.
8. Send a personal note, along with a poster, to your community contacts who may have influence and connections that can give the posters wider use.
9. Make it a goal to include each of the four poster practices in your next four baby storytimes.
10. Reach out to your local newspaper and other news sources to see if they’d cover the library’s early literacy initiatives, making sure to include Babies Need Words Every Day resources.
11. Hang the posters over changing tables. Use the Changing Table Locator website to find changing tables at establishments in your community frequented by families, then head to those locations with poster and tape in hand. Add any changing tables you visit to the locator if they aren’t already included.
12. Think of existing programs you do, both in-house and outside, and think of a way to work in the posters and the practices they tout. For example, if your library offers parent-baby classes at a hospital, bring some posters with to share with families and hang up in the waiting room.
13. Think creatively about where families in your community spend time, then bring posters to those locations. Think community centers, transit stations, laundromats, doctors’ offices, the post office, the DMV, banks, parks, schools, restaurants, grocery stores, shopping centers… truly, families are everywhere, and early literacy support can be, too!
How have you been inspired to promote early literacy throughout this week’s Babies Need Words Every Day blog tour?
This post was written by the Public Awareness Committee.
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