Time...

 

A year. Twelve months. Three-hundred and sixty-five days. It sounds like such a long time, but it feels like it was just the other day. 

That's how long it's been since I worked what would turn out to be my last shift at a job I loved.

Early Literacy To Go - March

 

This month I looked over a few lists of various holidays and observances in March for a little inspiration in planning my storytimes for this month. Although these kits are designed to stand alone, I also design them to complement my virtual storytimes, so that's where my planning process starts: first I plan my storytime themes, then I decide what crafts/activities I want to provide so I can order materials if needed, then I come up with all the other suggestions, songs/fingerplays, and tips. The themes I decided to use are: World Wildlife Day, International Day of Awesomeness (awesome new books), St. Patrick's Day, Folktales and Fables Week, and National Crayon Day. 

Snowflake Science & Frosty Experiments - STEAM Program

This month, I decided on a wintery theme, adapting a couple of activities from a previous program and adding some new ones to give it a snowflake science focus. Most supplies were provided in a take-home kit they could pick up from the library, which also had basic instructions and QR links to the Facebook page and YouTube channel where the video presentation could be found that would have a lot more information and where they could see me demonstrate the activities. 

Black History Month/Basic Concepts - Virtual Storytime

I've been doing storytimes for over six years, but this was the first time I attempted a Black History Month storytime. I've never really thought it was really a topic that lent itself well to a 20-minute storytime for preschoolers and/or toddlers, and to be honest, I was a bit intimidated by the idea of trying. 

Pandemic STEM Programming

One of my goals in my new position was to get some STEM programming going as there was very little being done in this system and none at my library. So once I had early literacy covered with both take-home kits and virtual storytimes, I turned my attention to STEM.

Mystery Storytime

 

As I've mentioned before, we have gotten in several new picture books lately that I knew would be really great for storytime, and I decided I wanted to use them sooner rather than later. I came across a particular book that I knew would be really fun to do, and since it was a longer book, I made it the sole focus of today's storytime, which was delivered virtually.

After the "Hello" song, I explained that today we were going to be detectives and solve a mystery.

Early Literacy To Go - February

 

I had somewhat of a difficult time putting this month's kit together. Part of it was just a lack of uninterrupted time to concentrate on planning, but the ideas just weren't flowing, either. I also had to do a little back-tracking because I had initially planned out my storytimes for the month mainly featuring new picture books rather than themes because we've gotten so many great ones in lately, but then realized I had not done anything in any way for Black History Month, so I had to re-think everything. And since I like to make the early literacy to go kits complement the virtual storytimes, I had to get the storytimes planned before I could plan the kit.

New Books - Virtual Storytime

 
We have gotten in so many great picture books lately that I couldn't wait to use, I decided to forego using a theme for a couple of weeks this month in order to share some of them right away.