Time to Update the Storytime Resources!

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Melissa

I just got an email from someone asking for me to include their storytime blog on my Storytime Resources page–and as I did so I realized it has been a whopping 18 months since I last updated the list of storytime blogs here at Mel’s Desk. Yikes!

The list has grown ENORMOUSLY since I started this blog. How exciting is that? There are even more voices sharing, thinking, helping, and learning about storytime together. I would love to point to as many of them as possible. I link to storytime blogs two ways: in a list of links, and also through a Google Custom Search, both on my Storytime Resources page. The Custom Search allows you to look for storytime ideas ONLY in the blogs listed, and not on the entire web. Sometimes that can be helpful, sometimes it’s not really necessary, but it’s nice to have an option.

Please check out the list and search! If I don’t have your storytime blog, site, or wiki listed and you’d like to be included, just let me know in the comments here. If you notice I have an old or bad link to your blog, make sure I know that too! Also feel free to share if you don’t have a blog but I’ve overlooked your favorite resources.

Thanks!

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Going on a Picnic: Flannel Friday AND Bonus Staff Training Activity

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Melissa

Today I’m sharing a flannel set that I did not make for an idea I did not come up with! But it’s a good one, plus I wanted to tell you how our team has used it for a staff training activity, for which it is PERFECT.

First, the set!

FullPicnic

Just make a picnic basket and as many different kinds of food as you like. Ideally you will have one piece for each child in storytime.

Then hand out the pieces, and put the basket on the board. Now you’re ready to sing Raffi’s song “Going on a Picnic“!

Going on a picnic, leaving right away
If it doesn’t rain we’ll stay all day

Then Raffi follows up by singing: “Did you bring the apple?” and the kids echo back, “Yes, I brought the apple.” You do that a few times with different foods then sing the chorus again.

The kids bring their piece up to the board when you sing it. It’s always fun for the kids to add pieces to the board and you can do this as many times as you like depending on the size of your group. You could also add funny things like alligators or spaceships if you wanted.

That’s it! Easy peasy. This fits in food storytimes, of course, but also summer, holidays, going places, and colors. You could also tie it in to almost any food book by making an extra felt piece to match. So you could add it to a cookie storytime by creating a cookie piece, or to a pizza storytime, or whatever you wanted. You could add it to a toys storytime by including a ball, or to a clothes storytime by including a sun hat or ballcap.

Now, for the staff training activity!

A few years ago we had the opportunity to provide a storytime training to all site supervisors. It was designed to give them a crash course in prepping and delivering our literacy-based storytimes, so that they would be better equipped to effectively observe their direct reports in storytime.

We wanted the supervisors to see that even though we are only delivering one literacy message to the adults each storytime, EVERYTHING we do in storytime supports early literacy skills. We demonstrated this concept with this Picnic song and activity, and it was so effective that we adapted it for our new storytime providers’ training, too.

This is what we do:

We spend some time in the training class talking about Every Child Ready to Read, and the six early literacy skills and the five practices. Then we give them a worksheet that just lists the names of the 6 skills and the 5 practices with a little room to write some notes by each item, and tell them they are going to play “I Spy” for early literacy!

Next one of the trainers sets up to do the Going on a Picnic activity, handing out a couple of shapes to the trainees but keeping most of them in her hand. (We want the trainees to have at least one opportunity to engage in the activity themselves, but not have to participate so much that they don’t have time to write and think.) What we do is just run through the activity, repeating the song and the call-and-response over and over. The staff are asked to listen and watch and participate, and make notes on their worksheet every time they “spy” a practice or a skill in action. That’s why we run through it so many times…we want them to be able to consider what they are seeing from the perspective of each of the skills and practices. Some of the connections staff make right away, but sometimes they have to stop and think and watch a few rounds of the activity before they see how a skill fits in.

After a few minutes, when we’ve noticed that most of the staff have notes for most of the worksheet, we stop and have a discussion about what they’ve seen, and reinforce what they’ve learned about the skills and practices.

And yes, all the skills and practices are in this activity! Here’s some of the things we say as we’re presenting to highlight some of the different skills & practices.

Hey, we’re going on a picnic today! Do you know what a picnic is? Yes, it’s when you take your food along with you on a little trip and you eat it outside, at a park or on a hike. How do you get ready for a picnic? Great! Yes, we have to first find a picnic basket, and then choose our food, and then pack it. Then we can get in the car or on our bikes and go to our picnic spot! Finally we can eat all this good food. Yum! (talking, narrative skills)

Apple

Did you bring the apple? Yes, I brought the apple. This apple is red! What other colors could an apple be? Yes, green, or yellow. Definitely. (vocabulary)

SwissCheese

Did you bring the cheese? Yes, I brought the cheese. Oooh, looks like this is Swiss cheese! There’s lots of kinds of cheese and they look and taste differently. You can tell this is Swiss cheese because it has holes. (background knowledge)

JamJelly

Did you bring the jam? Yes, I brought the jam. Hey, look, this jar has a label that says, “Jam.” [point to the word] J-aaaaaa-mmmmm, jam. Did you bring the jelly? Yes, I brought the jelly. There’s a label here, too! J-eh-llllll-eeeee. Do you know what I notice? I notice that the jam and the jelly both start with the same letter. They both start with J, right here, and here. (reading, letter knowledge)

Labels

Wow, look, some of our food has labels and some of it doesn’t. The apple doesn’t have a label, or the cheese. But the peanut butter does, and the jam and jelly. What other foods have labels with words on them? What other foods don’t have labels or words? (print awareness)

Here are some of the other skills and practices that we pull out in general:

Singing–singing the song
Playing, Print Motivation–involving children in an enjoyable activity related to reading
Writing–holding and manipulating small felt pieces is fine motor practice

So there you go! We’ve found that demonstrating this flannelboard immediately after we’ve introduced the skills and practices really helps make those concepts snap into place for new staff. What do you do with your staff when you are introducing early literacy and Every Child Ready to Read?

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Early Literacy Storytime: Feelings Vocabulary

Posted on September 17, 2013 by Melissa

To build up their background knowledge and their understanding of their world, children need to know more than just the names of concrete objects. They also need to know the names for abstract concepts and feelings and ideas. Since children can’t physically interact with these concepts, activities that prompt conversations can be one way to help children understand the meanings of these words.

My first inspiration for this activity was Anna’s Flannel Friday post at Future Librarian Superhero, “Five Inna Bed.” I usually use clip art images of toys or teddy bears for this song, and was completely taken by her use of faces and how such a simple switch boosted the opportunities for conversation and vocabulary development.

Then, when I went looking, I found several other Flannel Friday posts with versions of the same faces-and-feelings idea!

Mary at Miss Mary Liberry doesn’t sing the song, just has children guess which emotion the face is showing. She adds in print awareness by showing word labels after the kids guess the emotion.

Nicole at Narrating Tales of Preschool Storytime made “feelings faces” to go along with a Jim Gill song, “Your Face Will Surely Show It,” to help the children anticipate which verse will come next.

And Katie at Story Time Secrets adapted a Preschool Express version of “B-I-N-G-O” to sing about feelings, and she uses clip art faces too.

So choose one of these ideas, or make up your own activity to introduce some good emotions vocabulary. I made my own faces to share with you! For the Five In the Bed/Roll Over version, you can print the yellow, blue, purple, green, and red “emotions” faces and the matching “sleeping” faces. You can laminate them separately with Velcro on the backs, or if you have a magnet board you can glue the matching colors back-to-back with a magnet inside. Or you can use these faces as templates to make them out of felt–if you plan on making the faces with a Sharpie, you might want to make two layers so the sides don’t bleed through to each other. If you’d like to use the Jim Gill song, you’ll also print out the light blue “cold” face.

Then, after you share your activity with the children, say something like this to the adults:

“Parents, when you talk about feelings with your children, they begin to learn the words for ideas that they can’t touch or see. This helps them become good readers because they will need to be able to understand abstract ideas when they are reading.”

Faces for Feelings (13 page pdf)

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What I’m Reading: On the Blogs #1

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Melissa

So it’s been a really slow six months for posts here at Mel’s Desk, as I’ve juggled a lot of work for the new Bell Awards and consciously tried to ramp down from a super busy couple of years–at home and at work and online. But I’ve missed being more engaged here (Abby’s August post really resonated with me) and am looking forward to getting back in a regular groove this fall. Thanks for your patience and for having so much to contribute when I did manage to post!

I’m always inspired by a good blog link round up–from Abby or Katie or more currently the Coolest Thing on the Internet posts from Storytime Underground.

At the risk of overlapping with other link roundups, I’m going to start offering my own from time to time. Most of the links will have to do with storytime, because that’s just what I think about the most. It will help keep me working through my reader, give me a chance to point to some of the great blogs I read, pay forward some of the help I’ve received from other bloggers, and hopefully share a few links that are new and useful to you.

Here’s a few links from August. (Yes, *all* of August. I had a LOT of catching up to do!)

Baby Storytime Books

Abby shared her fourth list of great books for baby storytime–and links to her other three lists at the bottom of the post, so don’t miss those either. I love that she doesn’t just give us the titles, but shares out why those books have been working for her storytimes.

DIY Digital Storytime Elements

My library is just starting to dip our toes into trying out digital elements in our storytimes–I know, like, years behind some of you–and I love posts that describe what storytime providers have tried and how it goes. Little eLit is a leader for gathering this type of information, but of course others are writing and thinking about this too. Here’s a post from Cinjoella about her most recent experiences, including an app she downloaded to share AND an “app” experience she made herself in Prezi. Don’t miss how she projects her images without having to put a projector in the middle of the room and distracting her kids.

Infographics for Early Literacy

At the beginning of the month, Miss Meg shared how she made an infographic for some of her Summer Reading stats. Now the wheels in my head are turning about making small infographs to display in different places in the library–maybe one each for Reading, Writing, Singing, Talking, or Playing, with stats and quotes about each practice? You could put one up in your storytime area or play area for a week, take it down, put up another one…just another way to try to catch some eyes and pass along a little early literacy information.

Process Activities for Storytime “Crafts”

If you’re not familiar with Lisa’s writeups of her “Play to Learn” programs over at Libraryland, go right now and check out her most recent post, full of activities to go along with Mem Fox’s book Where Is the Green Sheep? Lisa’s “Play to Learn” programs are drop-in, hands-on, book-focused, literacy-based preschool programs and she outlines everything she does for each one. If there’s not something you can drag and drop into your own library, I will fall over. Even if you can’t do a whole program like this, she made me think about how easy it would be to replace a more traditional storytime craft with one of her open-ended activities, like the match-the-pompom-to-the-sheep game she describes. If you’re getting tired of the same old crafts, read through her posts and see what you can borrow!

Get Ready for Kindergarten Storytime

Anne at So Tomorrow shares about a neat annual program at her new library–a special storytime just for kids about to enter Kindergarten. It gives the librarians a chance to talk about kindergarten-readiness skills and marks a big milestone for the storytime kids! This seems like it could tuck into a schedule after summer reading and before fall storytime sessions.

An Awesome New Book Resource

Sometimes you just need to mix up your program planning a bit…which is exactly what Michelle did when she discovered Starting with Stories, and revolutionized the way she thought about books and themes. There’s lots of ways to approach storytime and preschool programs, so I love gathering ideas like this. This book was new to me, but now I’ve got it on hold!

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The No-Prop No-Book No-Sweat Storytime

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Melissa

Do you ever have nightmares about storytime? I mean, literal, wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-sweating nightmares? I do. Sometimes in my dream I have a huge group show up for storytime and no matter how much I try, I can’t make them hear me past the first row. (Which, if you’ve ever heard me in person, you know is a really silly thing for me to get stressed about, since my voice is really loud and years of marching band taught me how to breathe and project and usually the people in the front row want to be in the LAST row. Oh well.)

But most of the time when I have a storytime nightmare it’s this: I find myself in an unfamiliar library and I know I have storytime in a ridiculously short period of time, like, 3 minutes. And I’m running all over the place looking for the books I want to use and they’re not on the shelf and I don’t know where the flannelboard is or the supply room or even a chair to sit in and I just keep running and panicking until I wake up. Bleh.

Well, one time after one of those nightmares, I thought: I need a plan for a storytime that doesn’t need anything. Not one book, not one puppet, not one piece of felt. Then if I’m ever in a pinch, I can just sit down and launch into it, and wallah! No stress. So this idea has been kicking around for a long time (I think I remember talking to @sethers about it once a million years ago on Twitter) and I finally mapped it out. My rule was that it had to mimic a regular storytime experience as closely as possible, with all the bits and pieces and stories and songs and action stuff, rather than a storytelling experience, which is in my mind a completely different animal.

GOING PLACES STORYTIME

OPENING: Good Morning Song
[Long ago I adapted a Greg & Steve circle time song for storytime.]

Good morning, good morning, good morning to you
Good morning, good morning, good morning to you
It’s time for our stories, there’s so much to do
Good morning, good morning, good morning to you.

Are you ready to go on an adventure today? We’ve got lots of places to visit. But to get started, we’re going to have to cross a bridge. And have you ever heard what happened when the Billy Goats Gruff needed to cross a bridge?

STORY: Billy Goats Gruff

They made it across the bridge, didn’t they? What type of bridge do you think it was? Was it skinny? Long? Hmmm. Those are all good possibilities. Let’s see if we can be different kinds of bridges.

STRETCH: Bridges

Can you make a curve with your body? Put your feet on the floor and your hands in front of you. Now push your bottom in the air! [bear walk position] Good stretching! We’re being arch bridges now. What if we sit on our bottoms? Put your hands behind you and your feet in front of you…can you lift your bottom off the floor? [crab walk position] Now we’re suspension bridges! One more bridge…stand up and find a partner. Can you hold hands and raise them up? Now you’re a drawbridge…a drawbridge lifts up to let boats go underneath. Here I come, I’m a big boat…let go of your hands and lift them up so I can float by! Toot toot! Thank you! You were all super bridges. Why don’t we sit down and pretend to be boats now?

ACTION SONG: Row Row Row Your Boat

Let’s be rowboats. Rowboats have oars that you use to push the boat through the water. You sit and reach and pull and then sit and reach and pull again…like this! That’s it, good job. You guys know a song about a rowboat, so let’s sing it together.

Row row row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily merrily merrily merrily
Life is but a dream.

What if we’re on a really fast river? Can we row and sing quickly? [Sing again]
What if we’re on a really lazy river? Can we row and sing sloooooowly? [Sing again]

What did you see while we were rowing? Did you see any animals? I saw a bunch of cows eating the long grass on the riverbank. How about you? Oooh, lions? And dragons? Nice. Should we go looking for some other animals now? Why don’t we go on a bear hunt?

STORY: We’re Going On a Bear Hunt

Jump in bed and pull up the covers! We’re never going on a bear hunt again! … But wait a minute. There’s so many of us in this bed I’ll never get to sleep. Let’s roll over and see if we can make some room. Are you ready?

ACTION SONG: Roll Over

There were five in the bed and the little one said, “Roll over, roll over!”
So they all rolled over and ONE FELL OUT!

There were four in the bed…
There were three in the bed…
There were two in the bed…
There was one in the bed and the little one said, “Alone at last!”

Now I can get some sleep! Yawn! Everybody curl up and go to sleep…now yawn and stretch! Stretch your arms! Stretch your legs! It’s a beautiful day! I have another story about two friends who tried to visit each other on a beautiful day.

STORY: Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle
[I learned this story first at a Pam Schiller workshop, but it’s also in “What’ll I Do With the Baby-O?” by Jane Cobb. It’s a great, simple story with easy actions for everyone to join in on. Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle are your thumbs, and their houses are your fists.]

Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle went walking up the hill and down the hill to visit each other, didn’t they? How else can we go visiting? Can we go in a car? Or a boat? Yes, sometimes in a plane. How about a train? Let’s make our fingers into a train.

FINGERPLAY: This Little Train

This little train runs up the track
It goes toot toot! And then runs back.
The other little train runs up the track
It goes toot toot! And then runs back.

[Run your pointer finger from your wrist to your shoulder, then when you say Toot toot! touch yourself on the nose. Repeat on the other side with the other finger & arm. Same nose probably though. 🙂 ]

Have you ever ridden on a train? There’s a fun train that goes up into the mountains and you can look at the trees and the roads while you ride. Have you ever ridden on a horse? Let’s sing a song about a lady who came through the mountains with six horses!

SONG: She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain

She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes
She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes
She’ll be comin’ round the mountain
She’ll be comin’ round the mountain
She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes

She’ll be driving six white horses when she comes…

What if she didn’t have horses? What if she rode in a racecar?

She’ll be driving in a racecar when she comes…

[Sing other verses…in a silver rocket…riding on a skateboard…]

CLOSING: The More We Get Together

The more we get together, together, together
The more we get together the happier we’ll be
For your friends are my friends and my friends are your friends
The more we get together the happier we’ll be.

Thanks everyone for coming to storytime today! Next time Miss Melissa will have all her stuff with her. Pinky swear.

Have you ever had a storytime nightmare?

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More about the Bell Awards!

Posted on September 5, 2013 by Melissa

What are the Bell Awards? Well, don’t worry if you don’t know yet because I will be talking about them a lot for the rest of the year!

CLEL-Bell-final

The CLEL Bell Awards are a brand-new recognition of picture books that support early literacy development in young children–by modeling or incorporating the five practices of reading, writing, singing, talking, playing. One title will be selected for each category, five books in all every year. Our first winners will be announced February 5, 2014…but we’ve got lots going on before then!

OPEN NOMINATIONS

One of our goals is to foster conversation, sharing, and learning about great early literacy titles for young children all year long; not just when the awards are announced. To that end, our nominations process is open–anyone can suggest a book. This means you! This means right now! You can check out the selection criteria to see what type of books to suggest, then look at the titles that have been nominated so far. And then nominate a book you’ve fallen in love with this year. We can’t wait to see them!

YEAR-ROUND CONVERSATIONS

But wait, there’s more! Every week on the CLEL blog we’re highlighting one of the recently nominated titles and asking for your feedback. We want to hear if you’ve used the book in storytime, if it went well, if you have any ideas for extending the book experience for a program or classroom or outreach effort. These comments inform the selection committee, of course, and help them in their considerations–but they also inform your colleagues, and allow us to help each other think critically about early literacy practices, and think practically about how to best use these books in our collections and programs and services.

We’re working on gathering momentum around these discussions and need your help! Here’s the titles we’ve blogged so far this year. Which of them have you read? Please click through to those blog posts and add your voice in the comments!

Again! by Emily Gravett
That Is Not a Good Idea! by Mo Willems
Sing by Joe Raposo and Tom Lichtenheld
Exclamation Mark by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld
Tiger in My Soup by Kashmira Sheth and Jeffery Ebbeler
Open Very Carefully: A Book with Bite by Nick Bromley and Nicola O’Byrne
The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers
Tea Rex by Molly Idle
Have You Seen My New Blue Socks? by Eve Bunting and Sergio Ruzzier

And last but not least…

AN INTRODUCTORY WEBINAR

We’re very excited about this project and the possibilities the award and blog and future support materials can provide for assisting our library and teacher training, community outreach efforts, parent education, and storytime and preschool program planning.

To help us spread the word, the Colorado State Library is graciously hosting a webinar introducing the Bells on September 19, 12pm Mountain Time. The webinar is free and you are welcome to join us and find out more…including the 25 books on our Silver Bell list of honor titles from the last 25 years. Have we chosen some of your favorites? To join, follow this link on September 19.

And thank you!

(OK, I promise to use fewer exclamation points next time.)

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Early Literacy Storytime: Fill in the _____

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Melissa

Speech therapists talk about setting up “communication temptations” in order to motivate children to communicate or speak. A communication temptation is a situation that a child really wants to resolve in a certain way, so they are willing to try to use their signs and/or their words to get what they want. For example, a therapists might offer them a food that they don’t like, or take away one piece of a puzzle they are solving together. The child really wants to say “No!” or to find all the pieces, so they may be more willing to use their words. Any time we make it tempting for children to use their expressive vocabularies, we are helping their language skills become more fluid. One way to set up a communication temptation is by using a repetitive or predictable book, pausing before you finish reading a sentence or a phrase, and waiting for the children to fill in the missing word, phrase, or idea.

One way to do this is to choose a book for storytime that has sentences that are incomplete on one page, then are completed after you turn the page. This sets up a nice delay for the children to fill with their suggestions for the next word.

Some titles with this type of page turn are:

Flip Flap Fly, by Phyllis Root
Yawn, by Sally Symes (a board book)
I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More, by Karen Beaumont
Monkey and Me, by Emily Gravett

There are other books that don’t have incomplete sentences on their pages, but they still can work well if you include pauses for children to fill in.

Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr
I Spy with My Little Eye, by Edward Gibbs
Whose Nose and Toes? By John Butler

There are many, many books that would work for this! Choose your own favorite!

Read your book with the children. Pause when the book indicates so that the children have a chance to fill in the missing word. Or, insert pauses before the ends of sentences or phrases, or before a repetitive phrase in the book. With Brown Bear, you would say, “I see a …” [pause] / [turn the page] / [wait for the children to name the animal] / [then continue] “ …yellow duck looking at me.”

Tell them they are being good listeners and good thinkers! When you’ve finished reading the book, say something like this to the adults: “Grownups, when you let your children finish a phrase in the book, they practice saying the words they know and have a chance to say new words. The more words they can say, the more words they will be able to read easily.”

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Nursery Rhymes and Reading Skills

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Melissa

I have long been frustrated by this quote in Mem Fox’s book Reading Magic: “Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight.”

Because, you know, she doesn’t cite her sources, and there’s no bibliography, and of course what I want to know is WHEN and WHICH EXPERTS and HOW BIG WAS THE STUDY and WHAT’S UP WITH THAT SUPER SPECIFIC NUMBER OF RHYMES?

From time to time I Google it, trying to find the grain of sand I need to put into the databases’ clam shells and fish out a pearl.

Guess what? This time I got really, really close…and STILL couldn’t figure it out.

In the past, in addition to other strategies, I know I tried searching on phrases using the number 8…”8 nursery rhymes” or “8 Mother Goose” or “learning 8 rhymes” and I kept coming back to Mem Fox, but couldn’t get any further.

This time I searched “benefits of learning nursery rhymes” (did I do this before? who knows?) and came across a couple of nice articles:

The Surprising Meaning and Benefit of Nursery Rhymes (PBS Parents)

The Benefit of Rhymes (Bookstart.org)

Interestingly, the second article mentioned the authors I wound up with, but since it talks specifically about the ability to detect rhymes, and not necessarily the effect of learning nursery rhymes, I kept going.

And then on the second page of search results, I found this:

Phonological Awareness Training: Learning to Read with Nursery Rhymes

Which is a sample of a curriculum by Jo Wilson. In her introduction she says,

In the early 80’s Bryant and Bradley found that pre-schoolers who were given ‘nursery rhyme training’ subsequently made significantly greater progress with early reading skills than children who did not receive the training. Later work by Maclean, Bradley and Bryant (1987) found that these findings held even when influences such as intelligence, parents’ education and social class were taken account of.

But of course since this is a sample, there’s no works cited page.

But I took “Maclean, Bradley and Bryant (1987)” into Google Scholar, where I found a study that DID cite its sources: Shared Reading Correlates of Early Reading Skills, which gave me the name of this article:

Rhymes, Nursery Rhymes, and Reading in Early Childhood.

In the abstract, which I found on JSTOR, the authors write

A strong, highly specific relationship was found between knowledge of nursery rhymes, and the development of phonological skills, which remained significant when differences in IQ and social background were controlled.

Unfortunately, once I ILL’d and read the whole report, I realized this wasn’t the source of Fox’s “8 nursery rhymes” tidbit, because the authors only looked for preschoolers’ knowledge of 5 rhymes. However, Bryant and Bradley continued their research and later wrote Nursery Rhymes, Phonological Skills, and Reading.

I got ahold of that one too–but it was a continuation of their earlier study, so more data over time, but same number of nursery rhymes.

So I’m still stumped! I have read sources and citations at the end of other articles, dissertations, and papers, surfed in ERIC and Wilson and a few other basic academic databases, looking for a study about nursery rhymes and reading readiness that would have been published before Mem Fox wrote Reading Magic in 2001…and I can’t find it. Bryant and Bradley are the names that keep coming up, but I can’t see if they continued their research into the 90s. (The revised edition of Reading Magic doesn’t have a bibliography either.)

It’s pretty clear, though, that having a working knowledge of nursery rhymes does have a positive impact on a child’s reading skills. For instance, the great Center for Early Literacy Learning published a research synthesis in 2011 called Relationship Between Young Children’s Nursery Rhyme Experiences and Knowledge and Phonological and Print-Related Abilities that reviewed 12 studies. It’s a cogent short overview and has two pages of citations if you want to keep reading. They say,

Results showed that the nursery rhyme measures were related to both phonological- and print-related literacy outcomes, and that nursery rhyme experiences and knowledge proved to be the best predictors of the study outcomes. The findings provide support for a relationship between young children’s nursery rhyme abilities and their phonological- and print-related skills, including emergent reading.

So, Mem Fox is right, in general, but I knew that going in–that exposure to rhyming words and games does help build a child’s phonological awareness, and through that, his or her pre-reading skills. But my admittedly seriously rusty research skills can not turn up a study that would have given her the idea to quote those specifics of 8 nursery rhymes by 4 years of age.

Are you aware of a study like this? Can you put me out of my misery?

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Apps for a Preschool Tablet Program

Posted on August 3, 2013 by Melissa

Until I get to a write-up of our pilot tablet program (children and adults paired on a tablet, with both guided and free-play app time), here is a quick list of the apps we (me and my colleague Laurie Anne) are highlighting this first go-round. We looked for apps that would have strong connections to the ECRR five practices: reading, writing, singing, talking, and playing, and offer lots of opportunities for that great parent-and-child sharing and joint engagement. Laurie Anne did a lot of the leg work for this and we relied heavily on Common Sense Media and the Children’s Technology Review for help selecting.

dpt
Drawing Pad (Android & iOS)
A Parents Choice Gold Award, this app from Darren Murtha Design offers a great selection of art materials to draw with–markers, pencils, crayons, stamps, etc, all with distinct characteristics. There’s wide color selection, and a toolbox of ways adjust your lines and marks–for example from skinny to wide, from transparent to opaque. You can save to the app, or to your device, create a book or album, print, or share via Facebook, email, or Twitter. In-app purchases of coloring books are available, but not necessary for getting the most out of this app.

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Doodlecast (iOS)
Another great app from one of my favorite developers, Sago Mini (recently bought by Toca). Children can choose from 36 coloring pages with incomplete drawing prompts, such as a smile, with the written and spoken question: “Whose mouth is this?” or clouds and a sunshine with the question, “What’s happening in the sky?” (There is also a blank page option.) Children can choose from 9 colors and 3 line widths to use while completing the drawing, and a mic can be turned on to record what they say while they draw. When the drawing is completed, you can watch the recorded drawing and voice-over, save it for later, and watch it again.

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The Going to Bed Book (Android & iOS)
Classic Boynton silliness comes to life in this Loud Crow book app. There’s just the right amount of the type of interaction that makes sense to the story: for instance, when you see the tub full of animals, you can turn on the spigot and pour water in the tub, creating bubbles to pop.

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Musical Me! (iOS)
A deceptively simple app from Duck Duck Moose, with great reviews from Parents Choice and Children’s Technology Review. Children can explore five different areas, each emphasizing a different musical concept (pitch, rhythm, notation, sound). Kids can “just” mess around, or really focus & experiment. Activities include: copy note patterns & listen to different pitches; move notes around on a staff and change a familiar song into your own creation; experiment with tempo; play different instruments and explore their sounds; and of course, make monsters dance in time to a song.

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Toca Builders (iOS)
Seriously, just buy everything Toca makes. Their new Builders app looks like a junior Minecraft: activate different creatures to build with square blocks on a 3D plane. Color, lift, move, stack, and destroy to your heart’s content. Take pics of your creations and you can share them out. Make a building, make a mermaid, or just mess around: that there are no rules or time limits exemplifies Toca’s philosophy of making toys, not games.

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Toca Hair Salon 2 (Android & iOS)
Most Toca apps are iOS only, so we wanted to include one for our Android families. In the Toca Hair Salon you can choose your character and let your imagination fly. Select a hair type, then color, cut, and blow-dry to your heart’s content–then grow the hair out and start over.

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Endless Alphabet (iOS)
A stand-out, well-designed app from Callaway that fosters letter recognition, phonics practice, and vocabulary building, all served up with the giggles for preschool and kindergarten kids. Children swipe through a collection of words, dragging a set of animated letters (who make their letter “sound” when tapped) into the correct order. Once the word has been assembled, the creatures act out the definition. A unique selection of words, with more added every week, keeps this app fresh for grownups as well as kids.

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Kids ABC Letters (Android)
A basic Android app with a few letter-recognition activities to help children learn letter names and shapes. (This was our it-will-work Android complement to the Endless Alphabet on iOS, but I’m hoping to find a better one. Would love to hear your Android recommendations for beginning letter skills!)

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Handouts in Storytime

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Melissa

So recently Jenny asked for some advice about creating a handout for storytime families, and we decided we both wanted to hear what everyone else had to say too!

Do you have handouts for your families? If you do create handouts for storytime, what goes on them? All the songs, rhymes, books, from your storytime plan? Other books on your theme that you didn’t read in storytime?

Sometimes libraries do a weekly handout that is different for each storytime, and sometimes libraries put together a nice “permanent” booklet of rhymes and songs that they can dip into and out of from week to week.

I also remember when ECRR1 was gaining in popularity there was a lot of renewed interest in using a handout to help convey literacy information. What is your library doing to convey literacy information in a printed format, either paper or digital?

I’ve certainly used handouts in storytime before–and no matter how lovingly arranged or thoughtfully written (or not!) I have seen a whole range of responses to them: sometimes parents use them just during storytime, sometimes they tuck them in diaper bags to take home, and sometimes they are left on the floor, crumpled and half-chewed. What has been your experience? How do you make it manageable for parents who are juggling kids and strollers and bookbags to deal with one more piece of paper?

Thanks for sharing your experience and advice!

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Posted in Storytime & Programs | 14 Comments