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National Library Legislative Day, a two-day advocacy event championing libraries and library legislation in Washington, D.C., is taking place from May 2-3 this year. The need to let our elected representatives know how imperative is it to have quality services for young children as well as decent pay for those of us who work with young children, has only grown within the past year.

Two weeks ago, I watched a newly released video series called “The Raising of America.”  It presented updated facts and research regarding the importance of the earliest years in children’s lives as well as historical information regarding childcare in the US.

I was surprised to learn that in 1970, Senator Walter Mondale introduced a bill called the Comprehensive Child Development Act (CCDA) that aimed to make the US government responsible for providing “high-quality childcare and early education, home visiting and other services to each and every family that wanted it.” Calling for free, universal childcare in the US, the CCDA sought to promote both social equality and national prosperity. It was passed in Congress with bi-partisan support from both Democrats and Republicans.

In order for it to become law, however, it needed to be signed by President Nixon. Pressure was put on him by groups claiming that universal childcare in the US would undercut “personal responsibility” and erode “family values.” Ignoring the fact that a large number of women could only support their families by working, that parents with children would need childcare in order to work outside of the home, and high-quality childcare could be too costly for some families, this government program that could have helped poor and working families was vetoed.

The CCDA bill was re-introduced twice in Congress following the 1971 veto. Although millions of people could have benefitted from it, vocal opponents claimed that the CCDA would “relieve parents of their responsibility for child rearing” rather than strengthening the family. Because of politics, the bill was squelched.

Lower and middle class working mothers in the US today struggle to find high-quality, affordable childcare. Some families pay more for childcare than they do for rent! The earliest years are the ones that form the social, emotional, and cognitive framework for children; not having adequate childcare can severely limit possibilities for development of important skills and experiences. It is not unusual in public libraries to see young struggling mothers visiting with their children. They seem tired, impatient, and beaten down. Because they cannot afford childcare, they are unwillingly “stuck” with the children, and unable to get a job that will help pay their bills while also building their self-esteem.

Although we provide a haven for these families, offer literacy programs, share information, and provide resources, it would be great if we could do more. Perhaps we can help by participating in National Library Legislative Day and telling our elected officials about the importance of free public services to families with children. I wonder if legislators realize the full impact of their actions on early childhood education. To whom do they talk to learn about the implications of policy?

Today’s guest blogger is Betsy Diamant-Cohen, posting on behalf of the ALSC Early Childhood Programs and Services Committee, of which she is a member. Betsy developed the Mother Goose on the Loose early literacy program; she enjoys consulting and presenting training workshops to fellow librarians.

The post National Library Legislative Day Matters! appeared first on ALSC Blog.

The San Francisco Public Libraries and the San Mateo County Libraries held the seventh annual Tricycle Music Fest in October! Frances England, Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band, The Not-It’s!, and Aaron Nigel Smith played sixteen concerts at libraries and parks throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

I had the opportunity to coordinate all of the concerts at the San Mateo County Libraries this year. Kahla Gubanich already wrote a wonderful blog post about planning a children’s concert at the library, which includes all of the most important details about putting together a large scale concert program. However, I wanted to share the work our amazing Youth Services staff did at our recent concerts. 

Each location put together Family Engagement activities for patrons to participate in before, during or after the concerts.  Check out some of the exciting activities our staff facilitated:

• Play
  • Blocks
  • Waterbeads
  • Bubbles
  • Imagination Playground
  • Legos & Megablox
  • Playdough
  • Water Tables
• Arts and Crafts
  • Chalk Masterpieces
  • Animal Crafts, followed by a Pet Adoption Fair

If you’re planning to host a family concert at your library, consider adding on one of the above activities for even more fun!

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Stephanie Saba is the Senior Librarian at the Brisbane Library in California and is writing this post for the Early Childhood Programs and Services Committee.

The post Tricycle Music Fest at the San Mateo County Library and the San Francisco Public Library appeared first on ALSC Blog.

Over the past few months, my library has partnered with a local resource center that provides early intervention and lifelong support to individuals with a variety of developmental disabilities, including cerebral palsy and autism spectrum disorders.  The resource center originally reached out to us looking for a librarian to read a few stories to their clients. I knew a sensory storytime would be a great fit, but in their experience, visits to offsite locations were rarely successful.  Any activity we planned would have to take place at their location.  So I took my sensory storytime on the road, and got a chance to really put my skills to the test.

I’m fairly new to sensory storytimes.  Before this, I had incorporated concepts into my regular programming, and made real efforts to make those programs universally designed, but I certainly wasn’t actively promoting this. Partnering with the resource center gave me the opportunity to refine my skills and try new activities.  My first visit wasn’t without hiccups. For example, sign-up sheets and library card applications became problematic due to HIPAA and patient privacy concerns.  We also ended up with a lot more kids in attendance than we were expecting. But in the end, like Pete the Cat taught us in our story that day, “it’s all good.”

In taking these special programs out into the community, we’ve found that children and their caregivers can have a library experience in an environment that is comfortable for them, surrounded by people they trust. Plus, our partner organization has developed a better understanding of what we can offer.  It has inspired other collaborations, with new programs and training for children’s librarians in the works.

There is a lot of information on the ALSC Blog to help you prepare sensory and special needs storytimes. I found Ashley’s Waring’s Sensory Storytime Tips and Jill Hutchison’s overview of Renee Grassi’s Beyond Sensory Storytime presentation to be particularly useful posts for providing information and talking points for communicating with the center’s directors and staff.  In addition, an ALSC course I took this spring taught by Kate Todd, Children with Disabilities in the Library, was an amazing resource, and I recommend it for anyone interested in creating more inclusive library programs, or reaching out to children with disabilities in clinical settings.

Brooke Sheets is a Children’s Librarian at Los Angeles Public Library’s Children’s Literature Department and is writing this post for the Early Childhood Programs and Services Committee.

The post Sensory Storytime On the Road appeared first on ALSC Blog.

As a way to expand on our previously created Early Literacy Boxes and provide something for the next level of readers, our emerging readers, we created  Early Reader Backpacks. The backpacks are designed for children from kindergarten through the second grade. They contain early reader and nonfiction books that have been paired with a toy or game that reinforces the book’s theme. Many of the Early Reader Backpacks have a science, logic or math component, complementing the Common Core and STEM curriculum in our schools.  More than that, they’re fun! One back pack, for example, is about castles. Children can read a nonfiction book about castles, enjoy a story about a knight and then challenge their logic and special reasoning skills with a game of Camelot Jr. These kits may be checked out for up to three weeks, and are funded by our library Foundation.  We created an initial 20 kits and are in the process of adding an additional 20 because they have been such a hit.

Kara Fennell Walker works as the Head of Youth Services with the Geauga County Public Library in Middlefield, Ohio. She is writing for the ALSC Early Childhood Programs and Services Committee. If you would like to learn more about her early reader backpacks, you can email her at [email protected].

The post Early Reader Backpacks appeared first on ALSC Blog.

This year, I was delighted to be appointed to the ALSC Early Childhood Programs and Services (ECPS) Committee under the fabulous leadership of Matt McLain.  Because ALSC members typically serve two years on a committee and then rotate out, when I began attending meetings they had already decided to create posters for parents to be displayed above or around changing tables in libraries, businesses, and other public places, highlighting the five practices from Every Child Ready to Read (Talk, Sing, Read, Write, Play). These early literacy practices posters would be downloadable and printable, and hopefully customizable.

The posters would be beautiful but simple, combining each of the five practices with a rhyme and a developmental tip. Our goal was to inspire parents to talk, sing, read, write and play with their children, beginning with one poster per practice initially,

All parents of young children need to change diapers. If visually appealing, easy-to-read posters were posted above changing tables in public locations, parents would likely glance up and see them during the diaper change. If the rhyme was short and familiar, and the language was easy to understand, our committee hoped that parents would actually recite the rhyme on the spot to their children. Using a simple developmental tip to accompany the rhyme would help parents understand that reciting rhymes with their children is a valuable activity that can help build important skills for the future. By combining the tips with easy, practical suggestions, our committee hoped to encourage parents to begin incorporating the five practices into everyday life with their child.

Research has indicated that there is a link between the number of vocabulary words children know and their economic background. Published in 2003, “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3” by researchers Hart and Risley demonstrated that during the first years of life, children from low-income families hear about 30 million words less than their peers who come from more affluent homes. Young children learn words by hearing them spoken by other human beings (not necessarily electronic media!); when parents speak with their babies, they are building neural connections in their children’s brains. In addition to building a larger vocabulary, the young brains are growing more synapses to enable easier learning later on in life.

The study by Hart & Risley determined that lower income parents were speaking less or using fewer words while in conversation with their children. Further studies made the connection between having larger vocabularies when entering kindergarten and higher rates of graduation from high school. Having a high school degree influences the type of job and salary a person can generally expect to get. It has also been shown to affect health outcomes, family stability, and lifetime earnings. Thus, the number of words a child knows when entering kindergarten can lead to disparities, increasing the economic divide in our country.

Yet this gap can be easily bridged; having a large vocabulary before entering kindergarten can make a difference!

With encouragement from the ALSC Board of Directors, the ALSC Early Childhood Programs and Services (ECPS) accepted the mission of addressing the 30 million word gap by creating posters to tell parents that babies need to hear words every day.

The ECPS committee held monthly online chats in addition to meeting at ALA Conferences and exchanging regular emails. At first, committee members submitted early literacy tips such as “Sing a rhyme (or do a fingerplay) while bathing or changing your baby,” for each of the five practices. Then we compiled a short list of rhymes to go along with each of the suggested tips. The rhymes had to be in the public domain; if there was any question about a rhyme’s copyright, the rhyme was excluded .The next step was to select an artist; Il Sung Na was chosen. Then, committee members looked through his books and videos in order to find images to match the tips or rhymes on each poster. Once this was done, ALSC secured rights with Random House to use those specific images.

Although the posters use simple language, it was not so simple to design them!  After the rhymes, tips, and illustrations were put together on posters, committee members weighed in on issues such as font size, placement of text, and spelling. Finally, the posters were ready and our excitement about increasing children’s exposure to language was growing.

Our “Babies Need Words Everyday” posters are now available for free download from the initiative’s webpage: http://www.ala.org/alsc/babiesneedwords . They are meant for EVERYONE: your library, community partners, businesses in your community, and families. At ALA Midwinter, the ECPS committee will be hosting a session called “Babies Need Words Everyday,” starting with keynote speaker Patti Miller from the Clinton Foundation’s Too Small to Fail initiative and followed by a panel discussion and a talk about the posters. Printed posters will be available at the session.

Our thanks go to the ALSC Board of Directors who were instrumental in this project’s success by funding the poster printing, ensuring their translation into Spanish,  and encouraging free distribution. Because of ALSC’s strong commitment to bridging the 30 million word gap, and the valuable work that can be done by a cohesive committee with strong leadership, the concept of creating posters for changing tables has become reality.

Please check out the posters at http://www.ala.org/alsc/babiesneedwords, join in the session at ALA, and volunteer to serve on an ALSC committee for the coming year. Together, we can make a difference.

Today’s guest blogger is Betsy Diamant-Cohen, posting on behalf of the ALSC Early Childhood Programs and Services Committee, of which she is a member. Betsy developed the Mother Goose on the Loose early literacy program; she enjoys consulting and presenting training workshops to fellow librarians.

The post Changing Table Initiative Come to Fruition appeared first on ALSC Blog.

This past summer, the Fayetteville Free Library (FFL) offered several new early literacy programs targeted at improving family health and nutrition. Perhaps the most popular of these were our “Music and Movement” programs for infants through preschoolers. We know that music and movement are important at every stage of a child’s development, and can be made applicable for children who are at different stages. We were especially interested in creating new ways to engage families with babies and toddlers, and this series provided a fun, dynamic way to do that. In fact, libraries are well positioned to provide access to music and movement opportunities for children. As children’s librarians we already sing, clap, and engage in dramatic play through action rhymes in our storytimes. And while there might be other businesses that offer these types of programs, we found that they are often expensive and cost prohibitive to some families. I don’t claim to be a music educator, but I do think that, as librarians, we can instill in children a love of music in much the same way that we encourage a love of reading.

So why is it important to offer a music and movement program? Research shows that “movement education is basic physical education that emphasizes fundamental motor skills and concepts such as body and spatial awareness, but that it is also a philosophy of physical education in that it is success-oriented, child-centered, and non-competitive”  (Pica, emphasis mine). We also know that childhood obesity rates in American are at an all time high. Music and movement programs not only aid a child’s physical development, they help children “feel good about their movement abilities, [thus] they are more likely to make physical activity part of their lives” (Pica). An active lifestyle is essential for a child’s overall physical fitness and health.

Benefits to Movement

• There are many obvious physical benefits to movement, including cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition.
• Children need 60 minutes of play with moderate to vigorous activity every day to grow up to a healthy weight (letsmove.gov).
• Movement also has social and emotional benefits, as it helps children unleash creativity through physical expression like dance. Certain games and activities can also teach them cooperation and help them work together with peers and adults.
• Finally, movement also helps children develop cognitively; “studies have proven that they especially acquire knowledge experientially–through play, experimentation, exploration, and discovery.  Though a developmentally appropriate movement program, instructors can help nurture the bodily/kinesthetic intelligence possessed in varying degrees, by all children” (Pica).

Benefits of Music

• Music is vital to the development of language and listening skills. We know from Every Child Read to Read that singing is an important early literacy practice, and is a key way children learn about language.
• Music’s melody and rhythmic patterns help develop memory, which is why it’s easier to remember song lyrics than prose text. This is why we learn our ABC’s in a song.
• Music engages the brain, stimulating neural pathways that are associated with higher forms of intelligence such as empathy and mathematics. (National Association for Music Education)
• Music and language arts both consist of symbols and ideas; when the two are used in combination, abstract concepts become more concrete and are therefore easier for children to grasp. (National Association for Music Education)

Program Plan

Hopefully, now you’re convinced and wondering how to implement a Music and Movement program of your own. Chances are you already have most of the ingredients! I used a combination of acapella singing and children’s CDs for the music. I then broke the 30-45 minute program down into different activities and skills, for example, exploring up and down/ stretching and jumping; clapping and rhythm; clapping/singing and tempo; etc. Many of the songs and rhymes I used to correspond to these activities are familiar and beloved: “Pop Goes the Weasel” for jumping, “If You’re Happy and You Know It” for clapping, “Row Your Boat” for rhythm. For each song we sang as a group, I also played a song from the CDs. Other favorites included stop and go, or statue games. Children dance and move until the music stops and then have to freeze in place! Playing “statue” develops listening skills and helps children distinguish between sound and silence. It also helps them practice self control, starting, and stopping. “Stop and Go” by Greg & Steve and “Bodies 1-2-3” by Peter & Ellen Allard are perfect songs for this activity, but you can really use any song and then manually stop the music unexpectedly!  

In the second half of the program, we explore an instrument. Shakers and bells are perfect for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, and rhythm sticks are fun for older groups. There are tons of great shaking songs, including “Shake Your Sillies Out” by Raffi, “Shake, Rattle & Rock” by Greg & Steve, “Shaky, Shaky” by the Wiggles. “Frere Jacques” is a classic if you’re using bells. If you can’t afford a large set of instruments, you can also make your own and explore the sounds of common household items. I sometimes intersperse this half of the program with movement activities like jumping jacks and toe touches. Finally, we end with the parachute activities. We bought a 12’ parachute for $25-30 and a smaller 6’ one for use with the babies and toddlers. Not only are the parachutes endlessly entertain to children of all ages, they have a myriad of uses and promote teamwork and coordination. If you have bean bags, small balls, or a beach ball to add, even better.

Our Music and Movement Program at the Fayetteville Free Library was wildly successful with 40-50 attendees at each session. It was the perfect way for us to reach families with young children of all ages and support family health and an active lifestyle at the same time. Do you offer a music and movement program at your library? Tell us about it in the comments!

Resources for Music and Movement Education

1. Pica, R., & Pica, R. (2010). Experiences in movement & music: Birth to age 8. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.
2. Early Childhood Music and Movement Association
3. LetsMove.gov
4. National Association for Music Education

(Photos courtesy guest blogger)

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Stephanie Prato is a member of the ALSC Early Childhood Programs and Services Committee. She is the Director of Play to Learn Services at the Fayetteville Free Library in NY. If you have any questions, email her at [email protected].

In the time after the Early Childhood Programs and Services Committee met during Midwinter in Philadelphia, I had a short conversation with then-ALSC President, Starr LaTronica. She mentioned she had an idea in the middle of the night to use the space above changing tables for early learning posters with early literacy tips and fingerplays. Posters such as these could help parents and caregivers stay engaged with their children during the diaper change, and could increase the amount of words children hear.

It was a great idea, and during a subsequent conversation, the committee agreed to put together some ideas that could be used for the project. We decided we’d like to use the Every Child Ready to Read practices of Talking, Singing, Reading, Writing, and Playing.

We continued working, coming up with some of our favorite fingerplays and creating the early literacy tips. Then, shortly before ALA’s Annual Conference began in Las Vegas, the White House released a video message from President Obama about an initiative to bridge the word gap—the 30-million-word disparity children from low-income families experience in vocabulary, which impacts learning and school readiness.

During the committee’s meeting at Annual, Joanna Ison, from the ALSC Office, mentioned that the ALSC Board would be looking at ways to commit to joining the President’s initiative to eliminate the 30 million word gap, and thought the changing table poster project could be a way to do that. We agreed.

We are currently putting our ideas together for the posters. We are working with the ALSC Office to find an illustrator. Eventually, we are hoping we will have a set of ten posters, two for each of the five practices, with perhaps more to come. The best part is that the ALSC Board has committed to make them freely available as a download.

Our hope is once the posters are available, libraries can put them wherever changing tables exist in their communities, not only in the library, but in restaurants, museums, and government buildings. We hope that, rather than purchasing posters, communities can put together a collaboration to have the posters printed and distributed, and get parents and caregivers talking with their young children to eliminate the word gap.

We welcome thoughts and ideas about this project, and have become aware that some libraries are doing this in their own buildings. If you have a sample, please share it in the comments below!

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Matt McLain is the 2014-2015 chair of the Early Childhood Programs and Services Committee. He is the Manager of the South Jordan Library, a branch of Salt Lake County Library Services. If you would like to contact him, email [email protected].

This summer has been a busy one full of fun science programs at my library.  A couple of months ago, I blogged my plans for a preschool bubble lab that I had scheduled in July. I thought I’d write a follow up post about how the program turned out.

photo by Michelle Willis

A few days before the program, I prepared my bubble solutions according to the recipes I had found. I labeled the jars but decided to add a few drops of food coloring to two of them so each would be a different color.

On the day of the program, we set up each table with a cup of each bubble solution, observation charts for the children, and my volunteers. We were ready to go.  The first snag we ran into was that the combination of it having rained heavily for several days prior to the program and the general excitement over bubbles made for a rather energetic group. It was easy to see that they did not have the patience for a book reading, so I did a very abridged reading of the book I had planned, just covering how and why bubbles form.

We then moved on to our discussion of the day’s activity. When we talked about the various bubble solutions that we were going to test and I tried to elicit observations from the children about the three solutions, we ran into a second snag. What became immediately obvious was that I should have left the solutions the same color. Although the solutions with the glycerine and the corn syrup were slightly more viscous than the detergent solution, the children focused in on the difference in color alone. There was no convincing them that the color did not matter, so we moved on to the next part of the program.

photo by Michelle Willis

We divided into groups to test the solutions. This was the moment we were all waiting for and, to my relief, there were no snags. We tested each solution in turn and each child was able to try each one. They drew their observations on their observation charts and we worked as a group to determine which solution we thought was easiest to blow bubbles with and which we thought had bubbles that lasted longest.  When we gathered together again to share our results with the other groups, it was clear that the solutions with the glycerine and the corn syrup worked best. We talked about why this is the case and even hypothesized about how if we added more glycerine or more corn syrup, the bubbles might last even longer.

Bubble Observations

Judging by how the children were eagerly explaining their observations to their caregivers and how many came back to tell me they made their own bubbles at home, I would call the program a success. The children left with knowledge about bubbles and I left with the knowledge that sometimes programming is like science.  Things may not work out quite as you expect but the end result is still worthwhile.

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Michelle Willis works as the Head of Children’s Services at the Scotch Plains Public Library in Scotch Plains, NJ and a member of the Early Childhood Programs and Services committee.

As a new parent, I was spending hours looking for new toys for my baby and searching books and other activities to pair with each toy.  I quickly realized that the toys I wanted were costly considering how quickly babies and toddlers grow. The toys and books that parents buy in one season may be completely irrelevant to their youngsters a month or two later. We want our children to benefit from these types of toys but it is just not economical for most families, mine included, to purchase all of them. As a librarian, I know that linking literacy and play is effective in building a lifelong love of learning. As a mom, I realized that not all parents have access to the necessary resources.  I thought this would be a perfect opportunity for the library to provide parents with more tools to encourage literacy and play.

My proposal, which consisted of creating “Literacy Boxes” including one toy, one book, and one activity sheet for parents, was funded by our Library Foundation to the amount of $3000.  Our Heads of Youth Services worked together to select appropriate toys and books for 50 boxes and then created activity sheets for parents to help them use the literacy box contents with their child.  After a few months we quickly realized that these kits were a hit among our patrons and used some of our remaining budget to order the contents for 30 more kits, which we are currently in the process of assembling.

While we knew that parents and children would love these kits, we also tried to keep in mind the work that maintaining them would put on other departments, mainly Circulation.  We tried to be cognizant of the number of pieces in each box, knowing that Circulation would have to count and clean those pieces every time they were returned.  We also chose not to select toys that required a battery or that were made from cloth.  This makes upkeep and cleaning a bit easier.  Kits are stored and checked out in clear plastic Sterlite containers.  These are also easy to clean and help protect the toys.

                                                                                                 Photos taken by blogger

Each box’s book and toy pairs together either by theme or skill, and the activity card gives ideas on how to share the book with your child, linking the book and toy together, and different ways to enjoy the toy.  There are boxes appropriate for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers.  For a list of all of our boxes, visit our catalog at www.geaugalibrary.net and do a subject search for “literacy box.”

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Kara Fennell Walker works as the Head of Youth Services at the Middlefield Library in Middlefield, Ohio. She is writing for the ALSC Early Childhood Programs and Services Committee. If you would like to learn more about her early literacy boxes, you can email her at [email protected].

School has finally ended here and we are getting ready for a summer full of science programs for all ages to go along with our summer reading theme. Bubbles are always a welcome addition to the play period of our story times, so I thought creating and exploring bubbles at one of our Library Labs would be a great way for four and five year olds to be introduced to the basics of the scientific method, practice using science vocabulary, and learn more about surface tension, all while having fun.

The children will have been introduced to the idea of surface tension at the previous week’s Library Lab. We will experiment to see what happens when you sprinkle pepper on water and then insert a cotton swab that has been dipped in dishwashing liquid.  We will also do a similar experiment with milk and food coloring observing what happens when you insert a cotton swab dipped in dishwashing liquid.

I will begin our bubble Library Lab with a review of what we learned at the previous program. Then we will share a book that introduces the science behind bubbles. I chose Pop! A Book About Bubbles by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley because it offers information on how bubbles form, why they are round, and why they pop in simple and very readable text.

HarperCollins, 2001

Second, we will move on to bubble solutions. I have three bubble recipes. One is made with detergent and water only, one adds glycerin to the recipe, and the third adds corn syrup to the recipe. For the sake of time, I will have mixed the solutions prior to the program, but we will talk about the ingredients in each of the recipes. I will ask the children questions about how the solutions look the same and how they look different and we will record our observations on my dry erase board. We will also make some predictions about which solution we think might make the best bubbles and record those predictions.

Third, we will test our hypotheses by trying out the three bubble solutions. This will be both the messiest and most fun part of the program. To determine which bubbles are best we will be looking at which ones are hardest to pop and which bubbles last the longest if you catch them on the bubble wand. The children will be working in small groups during this part of the program with some high school student volunteers that will be helping the groups to record their data and observations on a very simple chart.

Photo by Michelle Willis

Finally, we will come together as a group to share our data and to draw our conclusions about which bubble solution makes for the best bubbles and why that particular solution worked best. I have also prepared a take home activity sheet with information on the day’s activity, the bubble solution recipes, and some additional activities to try with bubbles.

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Michelle Willis works as the Head of Children’s Services at the Scotch Plains Public Library in Scotch Plains, NJ and a member of the Early Childhood Programs and Services committee.

I was very excited by the partnership between the Association for Library Service for Children (ALSC) and LEGO/DUPLO. My library purchased classroom sets of three of the Read, Build, Play book and block sets for use in storytimes and other programs. I planned a special storytime series to debut the new sets. The three sets we used were Grow, Caterpillar, Grow, Let’s Go Vroom, and Busy Farm. The librarian toolkit (available here: http://www.readbuildplay.com/Read-Build-Play_Librarian-Toolkit.pdf) was a great resource for storytime ideas for each book, and it also provided good information to share with parents/caregivers. Here is an outline of how we ended up using the Grow, Caterpillar, Grow book and block set in our special storytime offerings for two and three year olds.

Butterflies and Caterpillars

Books:

• The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

• Butterfly, Butterfly by Petr Horacek

• Grow, Caterpillar, Grow by LEGO/DUPLO

Rhymes/Songs/Flannelboards:

• Five Little Caterpillars (from Storytime Magic)

• Very Hungry Caterpillar printables

• Color Butterflies

We opened with the same intro each week of Roll, roll, roll your hands (adding verses as appropriate). The first book we used with the Caterpillars and Butterflies theme was The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. I used a caterpillar made from green DUPLOs as a prop for this story. As the caterpillar ate through each item of food, I placed it around my DUPLO caterpillar.

Next we did a flannel board rhyme of Five Little Caterpillars. After that we passed out paper butterflies (made from stapling a paper butterfly cut from a piece of construction paper to a straw). We did the rhyme Color Butterflies and children raised their butterfly and made it fly when their color was read.

Next we read the book Butterfly, Butterfly by Petr Horacek. When we finished reading we turned on some music (Grow Caterpillar from the DUPLO Jams set available at www.readbuildplay.com). While the music was playing in the background the children helped me build a DUPLO caterpillar. We used a colored die and had a basket of the square DUPLO pieces. Each color on the die had a number on it. The children would add that number of colored blocks to our caterpillar on their turn.

After we built our caterpillar, I passed out copies of Grow, Caterpillar, Grow and together we read the story. After we read it as a group, I passed out the DUPLOS for each book and together the parent and child read the story again and built each bug as they read. This was a great place to insert the literacy tip included in the Librarian Toolkit about why it’s important to read a story twice.

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Kara Fennell Walker works as the Head of Youth Services at the Geauga County Public Library in Middlefield, Ohio. She is writing for the Early Childhood Programs and Services committee. If you would like to learn more about her LEGO/DUPLO programs, you can email her at kara.walker <at> geaugalibrary.info.