By Children’s Librarian Shelley Harris This weekend is bursting with holidays to celebrate! Saturday’s Halloween is followed by Sunday’s Dia de Muertos, Day of the Dead, and your public library is ready. We’re offering two Halloween dance party storytimes, one at 10 am for all ages and a Supported one at 11 am for kids … Read more
By Children’s Librarian Shelley Harris Greetings and salutations! Jenny and I have been having fun sharing words this week, from words about apples to what we can find around our homes. Words are everywhere! Explore words together with these videos, activities, books, and more. Watch these videos Miss Jenny has a book called Be Kind, … Read more
By Children’s Librarian Shelley Harris Back in the pre-COVID-19 days, we used to get small kids coming up to the desk and proudly reading a book to us. Their caregiver would laugh and say they had it memorized or were describing the pictures. And guess what? That is also reading! The articles about Picture Walks … Read more
By Children’s Librarian Shelley Harris Like the sounds we talked about last week, rhymes and rhyming words are an important part of pre-reading and reading. It’s another way to play with words, see how they’re made and how to break them down. This helps kids be able to understand how to sound words out when … Read more
By Children’s Librarian Shelley Harris When we think about talking with our smallest kids, there are so many sounds involved: animal sounds, choo choo sounds, airplane sounds. These may feel like small things, but they’re important—the sounds we make with our kids are the building blocks of words. Being able to hear and practice those … Read more
By Children’s Librarian Shelley Harris Jenny and I are huge fans of nature programming at the library. We’ve offered nature classes for babies, toddlers, preschoolers, elementary aged kids, and kids of all ages with disabilities, for years. That’s because nature allows us to expand learning in both reading and science! As Anne of Green Gables … Read more
By Children’s Librarian Shelley Harris Welcome back and happy autumn! Recently, Miss Jenny shared a book about a day that should have been exciting and wonderful turning into a big disappointment. Those days feel pretty common right now. Our kids want to go to school and learn and play with their friends—but right now, it … Read more
While so much has changed this year, our priority to support early childhood learning remains strong. “We work with educators, children, and caregivers to develop young minds,” says Early Childhood Community Engagement Specialist Jenny Jackson. “We set a foundation in social and emotional learning, and through that foundation we focus on literacy and connectedness.” Connectedness … Read more
By Children’s Librarian Shelley Harris Miss Jenny and I have been sharing a lot of words this week—big ones like “disappointed” and fancy ones like “scarlet.” The more words kids hear and know, the easier it is to read and keep learning new words: They can guess what a new word means when they know … Read more
By Children’s Librarian Shelley Harris The grasshopper chirpeth, the lamb bleateth, the owl hooteth. Animal sounds are found in so many books and songs for children, including the first known picture book written for children, published in 1659. What makes animal sounds so important that they’ve been taught to young children for centuries? Not only … Read more
