• Activities

    Story Time Theme: Blue

    Following in last week’s footsteps, this week’s theme is the color BLUE!  Although I had a much smaller crowd this week, we had a great time learning about the color blue.  I still haven’t gotten a chance to use my nursery rhyme cube, but we were able to get through…

  • Activities

    Storytime Theme: Purple

    This was the first storytime of the fall session and I had far, far too much planned.  Because it was the first one, I had to explain a lot of who I was, how storytime works, and our storytime rules.  This took up so much time that we didn’t even…

  • Lifestyle

    Early Literacy Enhanced Storytime

    I’m lucky to be a part of another online class presented by Saroj Ghoting, an early childhood literacy consultant.  I’ve been lucky enough to hear Saroj speak in public a number of times and this is my second online course I am taking with her, the first being “Early Literacy and…

  • Activities

    Story Time Nursery Rhyme Cube

    I’ll say this right up front, I can’t remember where I found this fun idea!  If it’s your genius at work, please let me know so that I can give you credit.  There is so much research in the story time world about the importance of nursery rhymes and singing…

  • Activities

    Story Time Theme: Playing

    playing

    The answer is bubbles.  I think that anyone who offers a storytime program should definitely be aware of the power of bubbles.  Our focus this week was on the last of the five early literacy skills: play.  I read three books all about play, but hands down our favorite was…

  • Activities

    Story Time Theme: Singing

    As I mentioned last week, I’m focusing on the five early literacy skills during my story times this session.  I’m choosing one skill for each week, which is really allowing me to focus on the skill and educate the parents as well as fun with the toddlers.  Last week we…

  • Lifestyle

    Groundbeaking News… or maybe not!

    There is an article in The New York Times today titled “Pediatrics Group to Recommend Reading Aloud to Children From Birth.”  The American Academy of Pediatrics is officially weighing in about the importance of early literacy, announcing a new policy today that will encourage doctors to offer advice and become…

  • Activities

    Story Time Theme: Talking

    Today began our the first week of storytime for our summer session.  As you can see from my notes below, I’m offering a traditional toddler storytime for ages 2 – 3 1/2 and a parachute storytime for the same age group.  I decided to focus on the 5 early literacy…

  • Activities

    Story Time Planning

    I’m not one to fish for compliments, but I really enjoy when a parent in my story time truly enjoys the 30 minutes we spend together.  Because, contrary to what I feel some believe, I actually spend a considerable amount of time planning my story times “lessons.”  I’m a “theme…

  • Activities

    Story Time Theme: Socks

    Our next story time session has begun and with it, a new schedule which  means I’m doing back-to-back toddler story times on Tuesday morning.  Because it’s the first day of the month I also had to run statistics reports this morning, so needless to say, I’ve been very busy!  The…