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 Youth Services |
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How Can You and Your Child Get the Most out of the Storytime Experience?
What parents or caregivers can do after Storytime:
- Practice the fingerplays, songs, and other activities from storytime at home. This further enhances your child's enjoyment and understanding of the program.
- Check out books (and magazines and audio, too!). Storytime is designed to inspire a love of books - follow through by having your child select books afterwards!
- Storytimes often feature music. Check out children's cassettes & CDs. (Some experts say that some musical abilities are established by age 5!)
- Talk to the youth services librarian (storyteller) afterwards and have her help you find books and other materials. That's what we're here for!
What parents or caregivers can do during Storytime:
- Be on time to avoid distracting the other children.
- If children (or babies who come along) are unable to sit quietly, it's best to take them out of the program area. Try them another day when they're more ready to sit quietly. This helps us keep the other's children's attention.
- Encourage your child to sit towards the center and near the storyteller. (Hint: the mats are pre-placed in the best positions for viewing and for keeping children engaged!)
- Parents and caregivers can join in on the songs, fingerplays, and group participation activites!
Read-aloud Tips
Why read aloud?
Reading aloud is often the most-cited factor for the development of early reading.
Kids' listening levels are much higher than their reading levels.
It improves their reading, writing, and speaking skills.
Children imitate what they hear and see
When?
Start when they are infants. They won't understand the words, but the rhythm of the language will make an impression on them.
When to stop? Never - both for the reasons cited above, and because it's wondrous to catch your kids in the spell of a good story.
Tips
Preschoolers:
Use repetitive chorus lines, props, sound effects, stuffed animal audiences, etc
FOR MORE INFORMATION and a book list click on Reading Aloud
Older kids:
If they haven't been read to regularly up to this point, it's best to start out with something simpler (but a good story) and then to build to the "classics."
Use food! Think of it as good stuff going both the body and the brain.
Read in a darkened room with just a flashlight or a reading light, or with kids under a blanket.
Read on trips.
Read regularly, or at special times, but make sure it's the "right" time for your child.
FOR A BOOK LIST click on: Read-Aloud Chapter books
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