The LPL has a lot of librarian resource material to work with. In addition to many reference books, the librarians may utilize flannel board materials, crafting materials, Big Books, puppets, and music when creating their events. I spent some time looking though story time books and materials.
Supervisor: Renee Kirchner
Tuesday: 9am-2pm
The day began with brief introductions to the Youth Services staff on duty and a quick tour of the children’s department. The Lewisville Public Library has 2 story times every day of the week. Ms. Kirchner and Allen were scheduled to host Toddler Time (ages 1-3) and Mother Goose Time (ages birth-1). Both Ms. Kirchner and Allen were finishing up some work and preparing for the events. Story times are a multimedia event with music and slides showing details of the event such as the theme, story titles, song lyrics, and literacy tips. Each host creates the complete story time in its entirety and the event runs 20-30 minutes long depending on the audience. Content and presentation are at the host’s discretion. Ms. Kirchner uses a story time puppet host helper, a sheepdog puppet named Daisy. Parents are required to attend with their children and today was a full house with 22 children present. The theme was winter clothing and the weather was certainly cooperative! The story time consisted of 2 picture books, several songs, and dancing game, and a flannel board counting and color recognition story. Toddler story times are extremely interactive with lots of movement. The most important tip was “just keep going”! No matter what happens, unless there is blood, just keep doing your story thing. While the library does host Spanish bilingual Toddler and Mother Goose Times, there were no ASL or Spectrum Friendly story times offered. In addition to these targeted story times, I believe a handout or information presented during the slide show regarding parent scaffolding of the literacy and learning skills demonstrated during story time would be helpful. However, these tweaks would be both labor and time intensive and could negatively impact the overall budget.
After the story time, Ms. Kirchner gave me a tour of the entire library and introduced me to several other staff members. There were too many names and faces and I hope I do not offend anyone by not remembering their name when I next return. We then went over both the library policies and the specific Youth Services policies regarding dress code, behavior, and expectations. Ms. Kirchner also spoke to the general career arc of a librarian and her personal experience. She suggested that I become very familiar with the Google family of programs as many libraries use that environment. To more readily facilitate adoption of this new skill set, I have chosen to complete my log and ancillary projects using Google. I ended the day with a tour of the professional resources that are kept for the staff to use when creating story time or other events. I looked through a few story time idea books and was very interested in Step Into Storytime by Saroj N.i Ghoting and Kathy Fling Klatt. This book approached building story times informed by child development science and early education best practices. Storytime Magic by Kathy MacMillan and Christine Kuker was also interesting as it included ASL for parts of the story presentations, building a child’s ASL vocabulary (not Baby Sign which is apparently very different). The day was a bit overwhelming with all the new people and names and I felt a bit like Dorthy and the Wizard of Oz- pulling back the curtain removed a bit of the library magic.
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