Memory Box for Storytime

We're almost done with our Narrative Skills month, but I wanted to tell you about a great idea I came across--maybe you can use it the next time we do Narrative Skills in storytime!

Abby Librarian is a 20-something children's librarian who keeps a great blog. Recently she posted about how she uses a Memory Box in storytime.

Each week we find a small object that appears somewhere in one of our storytime books. At the beginning of the storytime we ask kids to guess what's in the box and give them hints until someone guesses it. We ask them to be good listeners and good watchers and let us know when they see the object in one of our stories.

Here are a few examples of Memory Box items we've used:

A small plastic pig to go with the book Bark, George!
An envelope to go with I Am Invited to a Party!
A pie (made out of felt) to go with All for Pie, Pie for All
A kite to go with AlphaOops!: The Day Z Went First

What a neat idea!

Narrative Skills

We still have a week left in October, and our skill of the month is Narrative Skills!

Narrative Skills include describing things and events, telling stories, knowing the order of events (sequencing), and making predictions (what might happen next).

Here are some ideas for promoting this skill in your storytimes:

• Talk with the children before and after storytime.


• Talk with the children about your theme for the day: What do you need for a birthday party? What would you take on a picnic? What would you wear if it were a cold, snowy day?


• Read a story and follow it with a puppet show (simply, so the children can retell the story at home with their stuffed animals).


• Share stories with a sequence.


• Invite the children and parents to repeat repetitive phrases.


• Have children help act out a story or nursery rhyme: Little Miss Muffet, Caps for Sale, etc.


• Share familiar fairy tales: Three Pigs, Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Little Red Hen, The Three Bears, etc.


• Share Mother Goose rhymes, story poems, fingerplays, and action rhymes.


• Some illustrations lend themselves to a dialogue with the children: What the Sea Saw by Stephanie St. Pierre is a joyous celebration of the sea and the shore with realistic, large pictures that make it perfect for sharing.

CLEL News

I apologize for having a slow month for YSIG posts! I have been very busy with projects for Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy, but will get back up to speed in a few days.

Some of those projects:

CLEL has a fresh look for our website! We are trying to gather as many resources for early literacy programs and services as we can. Please visit & tell me what is missing, so we can add what you need!

We've also added a blog. I know, I know: another blog. We're hoping to point towards national early literacy news and reports along with spotlighting early literacy programs and services in Colorado libraries. As we get going there will also be best practices and tips, book reviews, and other bits and pieces.

We've created a Facebook page and started Twittering.

Hope to see you around! :)

New Literacy Based Storytime Books!

Former ALD employee Kathy Totten has a new book out from Neal-Schuman, Family Literacy Storytimes. Kathy says the book is organized by theme, and she includes ways to use each book listed with 2 or 3 different literacy skills. She also has sample plans for each theme, focusing on just one literacy skill.

If you do a family storytime, especially a bilingual storytime, this book may be very useful to you.

Also, Saroj Ghoting, who wrote the "blue book" Early Literacy Storytimes @ your library, has another book out just this month: The Early Literacy Kit: A Handbook and Tip Cards. This sounds very cool and I can't wait to see the tip cards.

I've requested LMS purchase both titles for the branch professional collections, so keep your eyes out for them!

Seventh Early Literacy Skill?

There's an article in SLJ/Aug. by Ann Crewdson in which she makes the case for identifying and supporting a seventh, technology-based, early literacy skill. She provides a nice description of several gaming systems and CD-Roms that support the six early literacy skills. I'm not sure that the mere use of technology to support literacy needs to be elevated to the status of "literacy skill" and Crewdson admits that the 7th early literacy variable "remains elusive". She says it is out there, though, and evolving and she further urges librarians to help parents locate early literacy software. Do you think that video games for the 2-5 year old crowd (even with a literacy component) can really promote literacy or will they compete with books for a child's attention? I'm particularly thinking about recent studies that have shown Baby Einstein videos and the like to be detrimental to a child's early literacy development...

June is Vocabulary Month!

ALD's early literacy skill of the month is Vocabulary!

Vocabulary is simply knowing the names of things...lots of things, objects, feelings, and ideas.

Why is it important?

It's much easier to decode a word on the page when it's a word you already know. So kids with bigger vocabularies have an easier time when they start to read, since it's much easier for them to make sense of what they're sounding out.

What Can You Do?

• Talk with the children before and after storytime.


• After a story, go back to a page with an unfamiliar word or phrase (example: In One Monday Morning by Uri Schulevitz, you might go back to the jester and royal barber and ask, “Does anyone know what a jester is? How about a barber? Look, he has a pair of scissors in his hand…").


• Choose books with rich language.


• Never substitute words...use a synonym to explain the word (sometimes prior to the reading and at other times as you come to the word in the story).


• Read non-fiction as well as fiction.


• Present puppet shows and activities that present concepts: over, under, up, down, beside, around, near, far, tall, short, fast, slow, large, small, left, right, etc.


• Share activities about opposites.


• Talk about the emotions of the characters in the story.

What do you like to do to include this skill in storytime? What tips do you like to give to the grownups?

February is Phonological Awareness Month!

For ALD, at least!

Phonological Awareness includes hearing and playing with the smaller sounds of words and recognizing that words are made up of a number of different sounds.

Why is it important?

Because kids who can hear how words come apart will be more successful at "sounding out" words when they start to read. All the skills are important, but researchers have found that if kids are struggling to learn to read, this is usually the piece they are missing.

Fortunately, this is one of the easiest skills to "work on" in storytime, because it's all about rhymes and sounds.

What Can You Do?

• Sing, sing, sing! Or if you absolutely can't sing, chant, or play music CDs; most songs break words up into one syllable per note.


• Recite nursery rhymes and other rhymes or poems; rhymes depend upon ending sounds.


• Play with tongue twisters.


• Pick a sound for the day, and notice it at the beginning of words and at the end of words.


• Sing clapping songs (like B-I-N-G-0).


• Introduce different sounds to make and hear, for example: farm animal sounds that are part of the story, so kids can identify the animal and become a part of the story.

What do you like to do to include this skill in storytime? What tips do you like to give to the grownups?

November: Print Awareness

Our early literacy skill for November is Print Awareness!

What is it?

• Noticing print everywhere
• How to handle a book
• Knowing books have print
• How to follow words on a page

Why is it important? Because you have to be aware of words before you can read them; you have to know how books work. When kids are comfortable with books, with how to open a book and where the story starts and what those black squiggles are, they can concentrate on starting the decoding process.

What does this look like in storytime?

• For the babies: Have extra board books out for them to play with while they listen to you. Use big books as often as possible; they make it easier for babies to see the pages.
• Hold the book upside down and pretend you don't notice. Start turning pages from the end instead of the beginning. If the kids are older, they will correct you! If they are younger, "correct" yourself: "I can't read the book yet! It's upside down!"
• Point to the title as you read it.
• Point to repeating words or phrases in the story & have the kids say them with you
• Make books with 4-5s as a storytime craft. Talk to them about the parts of a book as they work
• Use words with big type or word balloons like What Will Fat Cat Sit On? or Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
• Add words to your favorite flannelboards. When you put up a picture of a castle, also put up the word "castle" underneath.

What do you like to do to enhance Print Awareness in your storytimes? What Print Awareness tips do you give to the parents during storytime?

October: Print Motivation

Our early literacy skill for October is Print Motivation!

What is it? Print Motivation is a child's interest in and enjoyment of books.

Why is it important? Kids who enjoy books and reading will be curious about reading and motivated to learn to read themselves. Motivation is important because learning to read is HARD WORK! Children who have negative experiences with books and reading wind up with less interest in reading and less desire to learn. (What are some of those negative experiences they might have? Don't turn the page yet! Don't talk while I'm reading!)

So it's really important that we make sure our children start reading and listening from day one and that they have a good time with books.

What does this look like in storytime?

• It looks like YOU having a good time! You’re the model that books and reading are fun.
• Make it fun for YOU. If you hate singing? Chant or play a CD instead. Don't force yourself to do things you hate because kids will pick up on your lack of enthusiasm.
• In the same way, choose books you love.
• If a book isn't working—stop reading! Tell the kids you'll finish it another time, and say it's time for the Hokey Pokey or the Tooty Ta, or just go on to your next activity.
• Choose pop ups, and lift the flaps sometimes, since kids really respond to the interactive stories.

What do you like to do to enhance Print Motivation in your storytimes? What Print Motivation tips do you give to the parents during storytime?

New Early Literacy Resource!

Lori Romero, Richard Lyda, and I all recently had a chance to work on a new resource website for Colorado librarians. We're part of a state-wide organization called Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy, and the website is one of our first projects. We're trying to bring together as much material as we can for librarians who are working with literacy-based programs.

Will you take a look at it and let us know what you would love to be able to find here? What resources do you wish for as you plan your literacy-based storytimes? It's very much a work in progress and we could use your input!

Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy

Back to Storytime!

Welcome back to storytime!

I'm spending some quality time with the 6 Every Child Ready to Read early literacy skills this week for a training project I'm working on, and thought I'd do a review post about them as we head into storytime season.

The six skills researchers have identified as essential for kids to have in place before they can be successful readers are:

Print Motivation: Loving books! Being interested in books and enjoying books.
Important Because: Kids who are more interested in books are more motivated to learn to read on their own.

Phonological Awareness: Hearing sounds! Being able to hear and play with the smaller sounds in words, like rhymes, syllables, beginning sounds.
Important Because: Kids have to be able to hear how words "come apart" before they can sound words out successfully.

Vocabulary: Knowing words! Knowing the names of things.
Important Because: The bigger a child's vocabulary, the easier it is to recognize words on the page and understand what is being read.

Narrative Skills: Telling stories! Being able to desribe things and events and tell stories.
Important Because: This is the comprehension piece. If you can describe what you're reading, you can understand it. If you can't understand it, you're not going to be very motivated to read.

Print Awareness: Seeing print! Seeing print everywhere, knowing how books work, how words work on a page.
Important Because: You can't start tackling learning to read print until you understand what it is.

Letter Knowledge: Knowing letters! Knowing that letters have different names, shapes, and sounds.
Important Because: You can't start to sound words out if you don't understand what words are made of.

If you do a storytime, tell us a little about how you provide your literacy tip to parents in your sessions. Do you do it at the beginning? Middle? End? Do you have a routine, or do you try different things each time?