How Long is a Baby Storytime?

I have started to brush down the cobwebs from Mel’s Desk, and in the process of going through old posts found the following question-and-answer that took place in January in the comments of one of my baby storytime plans. It’s actually a question that comes up now and again, and I am going to recycle my answer here as I start to organize my thoughts for new posts!

In the comments of my Mice Storytime post, Michael asked:

I followed your babytime schedule and it matches others that I have seen online. The program we offer is supposed to be half an hour long but what I planned only lasted fifteen minutes. What would you estimate is the duration of your mice storytime and the others that you have done?

And here’s how I answered:

This is a great question! I plan for about 15-20 minutes of material for the babies, so if that’s how one of my plans turned out for you, you are not missing anything!

A couple of things I do however aren’t written out in the plan: As everyone is finishing getting settled in the room, I talk about upcoming library closures, interesting family programs, new services (we’re going fine-free for children’s materials this year!), and so forth. This carries us through a late-comer or two and lets everyone get organized. Then I launch into my formal welcome and behavior guidelines spiel, and THEN we go around the room (I have typically between 5-15 babies/10-30 people altogether) and I invite the grownups to introduce themselves and their babies. We don’t take up tons of time on this, but I do take a few seconds to say hello to the babies and call them by name, see if they will look at me so I can smile and tell them I’m happy to see them. THEN I start my first song.

So it might be 5-7 minutes into the session time before we even “get started.” I do not consider this filler or wasted time! Not all of the patrons come every week, so it’s very helpful to go over the behavior stuff each time. And baby storytime is all about building relationships–between me and the families, and between the families and each other–so learning names is a critical part of this. And my calling out to the babies helps them get oriented and learn where the “front” of the room is.

Something else I just thought of–I usually do the rhymes and bounces 2-3 times through in a row, so that’s something else that might stretch the program a little from what is actually written out.

The other thing we do after all of our storytimes, including baby storytime, is set aside a few minutes for free play. For the babies, we have some soft balls, our shakey eggs and scarves, foam or soft plastic blocks, very simple and straightforward toys. We sit on the floor and let the babies play, and the grownups talk with each other, and I’m there if they have questions about their baby’s development, or books, or the library.

Because of our schedule, I am not in any rush to clean up after play time, so some of the families are there for a good 45 minutes–and only 15-20 minutes of that is the “actual storytime.” So in your case, you could add a welcoming activity to the front and a few minutes of playtime to the end and fill out 30 minutes very easily and comfortably.

On the other hand, the Mother Goose on the Loose curriculum is VERY well loved, very successful, and plans for a full 60 minutes of activities for a baby storytime! So another strategy would be to take two 15 minute baby storytime plans and just smoosh them together, and do 30 minutes straight of songs, bounces, books, and rhymes. If you made it clear that families should feel comfortable just standing up and leaving if their baby has had enough, you could keep going for the babies who are into the full 30 minutes that day.

I hope this helps! Good luck–-let me know how it goes!

How long do your baby storytimes run? How old are your babies? Do you have playtime too?