Today started out as an early one again. You know, I say that, but in actuality, I am getting more sleep here than I ever do at home. The first session this morning was an 8:15 am Every Child Ready to Read workshop.
Now, I have attended a couple of these workshops and learned quite a bit, however this one had a special emphasis on the importance of creating a learning space for young children to not only enjoy, but to learn as well. A lot of great ideas were discussed but the entire time I just kept thinking, my library already has that or my library is already doing that.
After sitting through that workshop, it made me appreciate the learning space my library has already created. As many of you know, the Book Nook is a great place for your children to come and play. It is not only a safe place, thanks largely in part to the large, cushioned books, but the puzzles and train table instill the importance of imagination , hand-eye coordination, basic early literacy skills, and cooperation.
My next session for the day was all about introducing iPads into the library. The main focus of the presentation was how staff can use the iPads to program, make presentations, and even provide reference in the stacks. Some libraries have even gone as far as to create their own interface in order to allow check outs to be made from the iPad. Amazing, right? I was really interested in how people plan on using the iPad and I really look forward to figuring out how our library can use the iPad for future programming.
After lunch with Diane, my next session was all about the library's need to collaborate with child care providers. Now I must start by saying that I think my library is great with collaborating with day care providers when asked. I, do, however think we need to be better about seeking out child care providers and delivering materials designed especially for them. I really enjoyed hearing about book deposits, or bags that child care providers could check out which would contain books, music, finger plays, etc. I think this is one of the simplest ideas we could enact at our library and I look forward to taking it home and seeing what everyone else this.
The last session for the day was a round-table of librarians discussing story time ideas that are "outside of the box.". This was by far my favorite session of the day. I loved listening to what other libraries are doing and trying to decide if anything they are doing is something our library would be interested in enacting. I had two favorite ideas from this session. The first is to have an A to Z Story Time, or have story time at 26 different places with each week being a different letter of the alphabet. So A might be at the airport while Z may be at the zoo. LOVE this idea.
The second idea I think my kids would love would be more work for me, but oh well. I think it would be really fun to start training my almost 2 year old dog to be a therapy dog. Winnie, my pup, is a great little dog who loves people, especially children. I think with a little, ok maybe a lot, of work, I might be able to bring Winnie to the library. Sounds great in theory, but why not?
Well, that seems to be it for today. I did have a fabulous dinner at a small little Greek restaurant called Kanella. Funny story, this restaurant was just being created when I lived in Philadelphia. I met up with a couple of college friends who moved to the city after graduation and we had a great time catching up and reminiscing about the good old days.
I hope you had a great day as well. Tune in tomorrow to get the dirt on early literacy and school readiness, programs that rock, and serving children that are on the Autism spectrum. Thanks for checking in.
** I should note that none of these pictures are mine, except the one of my dog, Winnie. They are images that I have taken from Google images. :)
So I just spent two hours cleaning the incubator. Yes. It was that bad.
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