We Cheated on Our Library and So Should You!

Want to know one of the best things about libraries (besides being filled with books)? They're free, silly! And they're everywhere. So why not take your child on a trip? Go visit a new library!

I don't know why my son and I hadn't done this before. I had been thinking about checking out the collection of a library in a wealthy, nearby town with the plan of perhaps paying the annual non-resident fee for a library card. So we drove about 30 minutes up there and checked out their preschool story time too. 

Honestly, I think the preschool story time at our own local library is better, but something new was fun!

We sang a lot of songs, read one story, and then made a craft. 

The library we visited was decorated much more elaborately than either of our own local libraries. There was an enticing entrance to the children's room, and then lots of neat forest elements that created a magical atmosphere in the entire area. My son was totally enchanted, and asked me to take bunches of photos of him. "Take one of me here, Mommy. Now take one of me here!" I tried to browse the books, but he kept running from one feature to another, calling me over for more photos. 

I didn't end up getting a library card for several reasons, the main one being that the collection didn't impress me enough to make me feel it was worth the money (They had no Lunch Lady books in their collection! What?).

But taking a trip to a library in a neighboring community is a cheap, fun, and meaningful outing. Here are some thoughts I had on how it might work for you:

- Visit the website of neighboring libraries. Have your child look with you and compare photos and features of the various libraries and let your child decide which one to visit first.

- Make a "library passport" where you create a simple book with a page for each neighboring library you wish to visit. Then stamp the pages as you visit each one in your book. You could include photos too!

- Make a library wish list, including features that you like a library to have, programs you enjoy going to, kinds of books you might want to check out, etc. Look for those things when you visit a neighboring library and compare your checklists later to see which neighboring library is the most appealing to your tastes! Did any offer things that surprised you?

- Make a note of all your favorite features of neighboring libraries, maybe take photos, and then encourage your child design their dream library. 

- Print out a library scavenger hunt (Imagination Soup has a great one that my children really enjoyed). Take the scavenger hunt to several neighboring libraries and see what you can find!

- Be sure to note the various offerings of neighboring libraries. Remember that you can visit story times, shows, and exhibits for free. In addition to the library visit shown in my photos here, I have also taken my children to another nearby library district that performs elaborate marionette shows regularly. It's often worth the drive for a free show and sometimes a special craft to take home with you!

- Check out branch libraries in your own district. We have several libraries that are within our district and have their own unique charms and offerings. And of course, at a branch library you get the added bonus of being able to check out books!

- Be explorers! Think of visit as a new adventure! Make a game out of who can find the most unusual, or interesting book in the stacks! Perhaps your child has been interested in a particular subject, see what new and interesting books you can find on that topic. 

- Even though you can't check out any books if you don't have a card for a neighboring library, you can read the books while you're there! How many can you read in one visit? Keep count! Set a record! My son and I read the entire book #6 in the Franny K Stein series on this visit we have featured here. (Then his big brother came home from school with the same one today! Great minds think alike!)

- If you fall in love with a particular library, consider paying the annual fee for a library card. If their collection is more extensive than the collection at your own local library, a $50 annual fee can be a lot cheaper than buying all those books you want to read off Amazon! Just don't forget to return them on time!

- Looking for a fun time-filler on your next vacation? Look up the local library in the area you're visiting and see if there's a story time or interesting program that fits your schedule. Perfect for encouraging young readers and reminding them that reading is fun! Even vacation-fun! You could keep track on a map of all the places you have visited libraries on your travels!  

Ideas for Encouraging Literacy at Home

A short list of ideas for encouraging literacy, from my family to yours. 

1. Give your pre-reader some wordless (or almost wordless) books and ask them if they'll read it to you. Mine can't get enough of this, and thinks it's great fun. He sat down on the couch with a stack of books yesterday while his older siblings were doing homework, and "read them. I asked him to take the recycling out and he told me, "Not yet, Mom, I'm right in the middle of my book!" 

2. Let your big kids read to your little kids. A win-win-win!

3. Keep your writing center stocked and available. You never know when the writing bug will bite! My little guy likes to have his in bedroom. He lovingly refers to it as his "office."

4. Be willing to drop what you're doing and read to your little ones when the urge strikes them. I know it's not always possible, so remember tip #2!

5. Turn regular toys into literacy-learning tools. This week we made alphabet letters out of Legos. It kept my little guy busy for quite a while on and off all week.

Literature-Inspired Creativity

I love to see a child hear a story, and then take some inspiration from it and go crazy with their own creativity! That has been happening at Literacy Launchpad all month! Hooray!

Literature-Inspired Creativity has been our theme this August. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well my students were engaged in this unit. They loved every bit of it, and showed amazing creativity. I was especially impressed with my youngest students; they usually don't say a whole lot, but I saw their participation increase this month. Everybody had original ideas and tons of enthusiasm. It made me really sad to see this unit end.

Each week we read a unique story, and then took that special element and let it be our inspiration for a fun project. Our first week it was creating a picture by incorporating "Lots of Dots!" Week two we read Traction Man Is Here and then designed capes for our own action hero identity. We wrapped things up with Call Me Gorgeous and collaged together our own creatures, with our own special names for them!

Check out the photos from our month of creativity below. I'll try to answer any questions in the comments if you have them!

Don't Stop Reading To Your Kids!

So, at what age do you stop reading aloud to a child?

I am a parent of two older, ELL children. My daughter is almost 12, and my son is 8. Neither can read much beyond a first grade level right now. So reading aloud to them at bedtime is something we always do. I think I take for granted that all parents read aloud to their children, regardless of their age and abilities. But that's not the case at all, is it?

When children begin reading independently, or sometimes even before that, we assume they have outgrown the need to be read aloud to. But we're wrong. The read-aloud benefits for a child continue even as they get into upper elementary, middle school, and beyond.

A parent typically has a higher reading level than their child, so even after your child is reading on their own, by reading to them, you are exposing them richer and more advanced vocabulary. They can take in that rich vocab by listening to a story, even if it's beyond their reading level.

Reading aloud also gives parents of older kids the opportunity to introduce to their children new authors, encourage the trial of a new genre, and a general broadening of their horizons. You might be surprised at how open your child is to your books suggestions, if they sense that you are genuinely taking their interests and tastes into account with your suggestions. And perhaps they might broaden your horizons with their book suggestions.

As children advance into their teens, reading aloud to them allows you to encourage reading by sharing interesting things with them that you have read. Maybe it doesn't have to be bedtime reading. It could be a bit of an interesting newspaper or magazine article, a funny passage from a book your reading on your own, or a review of a book or a movie.

Ending the read-aloud tradition might seem to a child like the end of you caring whether or not they read. It can send the message that reading just isn't important anymore, that you read with them only because it's necessary and not because it's enjoyable.

But continuing the read-loud as your child grows means continuing the bonding. Sharing a book together is something intimate and special. It opens doors for wonderful discussions. It's a shared experience that will live on forever in the memory and the heart of your child... and you!

What are you reading aloud with your older child?

Start a Preschool Book Club

What if we could create a book club experience for our little ones similar to the kinds of book clubs that we adults participate in? Yes, there are plenty of library preschool story hours (and I love them), but I'm talking about a small gathering of friends, meeting in a place like someone's house, each family contributing to the planning, reading, and discussing...

This has been a little dream of mine for a while. I honestly don't see it happening anytime soon for me and my son, but the fall would be the perfect time to launch your local preschool book club if you might be so inspired.

Here's what to do:

1. Invite neighbors, friends, your child's classmates, church buddies... you decide what kind of group you want to form. Use Evites, old fashioned paper invitations, email, word of mouth, Facebook (how fun would a little Facebook group for your book club parents be?). Get the word out and make it easy for people to respond and keep in touch with you about details.

2. Decide where you'll meet. It doesn't need to be formal. A home, the park, church space... Maybe you even rotate locations?

3. Choose a book to begin with and let the group know where they can find it, and when it needs to be read by. This can be any format, genre, or length depending on the ages and interests of the kids in your group. Maybe you want to assign a little activity for parents to do with their child at home, post-story, and then the kids can discuss the book and how the activity went for them. Make sure it's an open-ended activity so there's lots to chat about and there's likely to be variety in how it went for each family.

4. Plan a little discussion. Depending on the ages and attention spans of the kiddos in the group, the amount and type of questions you ask may vary. But just like any good book club, you want to talk about the book! So brainstorm or research some discussion starters.


5. Personalize your book club. What makes a book club different from a library story time is that it's meant to be more intimate and personalized. Choose a theme that interests your kids, let the kids give book talks and bring in some of their favorite reads to share with the group, develop special interests and opinions about various authors and illustrators together, give the kids some ownership and say-so in club plans.

6. Make it fun. Have parents take turns planning an activity and/or game to do with the kids at the club meeting. Scour the internet and Pinterest (and Literacy Launchpad) for ideas; you'll find more than you need! Serve snacks during book club and make them coordinate with your theme or specific book, if possible. Maybe let the kids help make the snack as part of book club. Maybe everybody can bring a snack to share that they feel coordinates with the story for that meeting; this would be a great discussion starter. Plan field trips, bring in special guests, have all kinds of fun!

The possibilities are endless, it makes my head swim. I think this would be something your kids would look forward to every week, or couple weeks, or month... or however often your group decides to meet.

Here are some ideas for a book club meeting for The Very Hungry Caterpillar (just as an example):

Have everyone bring one of the foods the caterpillar ate? (idea and photo from Offbeat Mama) Maybe do a taste testing together and you can make a chart, or discuss which foods are everyone's favorite. 

Get fancy with your storytelling? (idea and photo from A Wednesday Afternoon)

Plan an art project? (idea and photo from SmArt Class)

Learn something? (idea and photo from Busy Bees)

You get the idea, right?

Are you already doing a preschool book club? I would love to hear about it! Have some ideas to add to this list? Put them in the comments!

And here are a few more The Very Hungry Caterpillar ideas from me!

Summer This and Thats

Summer time = No time. At least that's how it feels for me as a mom. We travel, we swim, we go here, we go there... and I entertain children (Any other moms feel like a cruise director during the summer months?). As a result, I don't get to spend as much time here. I'm still alive though!

We have been visiting the library and doing better (though not great still) with logging our summer reading hours than we did last year. Who else hates reading logs in all ways, shapes, and forms? My kids have been enjoying choosing books on our library visits, finding books to practice their reading with, and listening to audio books.

I haven't been real jazzed about what we've brought home form the library over the summer months. With other kids out of school and frequenting the library more, it's usually pretty slim pickings. But here are a few selections that seemed worth mentioning:

I think we might read this next month during our last Literacy Launchpad Summer Session. My boys were initially expecting a certain type of ending, and were surprised when about half way through when they realized they had no idea what kind of ending this book was going to have. Unique, weird, and fun. It has helped inspire my theme for our next Literacy Launchpad session. 

What a darling story about the joys and benefits of reading. This one might get used in a Literacy Launchpad lesson too. When we finished reading this one, both my boys and I all said, "That was a really good book." :)

Dots, dots, dots! Can you think of all the places you might find dot shapes? This book will help get your kiddos brainstorming! Love the colors used, and the simplicity of the illustrations. And I've got some Bingo dot painters that are just begging to be used for a fun project with this book! 

Fun play with words. My boys needed some help figuring the word plays out, but really enjoyed the challenge and the fun of it. They asked their dad the next day, "Have you ever read this book? You should!" It would be fun to see what other kind of word plays you could cook up with your kids or students. 

My Little Reader "reading" me Carl the Dog at bedtime. 

Big brother reading to little brother.

Big brother "teaching" little brother how to read.

Keep 'Em Writing: Summer Pen Pals

My lovely cousin, Holly, asked me if my kids would like to be pen pals with her kids over the summer and I hastily replied, "Yes!" Holly is a teacher and knows what good writing practice this will be for our kids. I'm thankful for her initiative, as this was one of those things I was wanting to do this summer, but wasn't sure I was going to get around to starting.

Our kids have never met, and so this is a great way for them all to get to know each other. It's also fun for them all to get real mail in the mailbox. And coming up with interesting things to write about, or clever letter-writing ideas, will be cool too!

Holly's kids sent fun little pen pal boxes to mine to get it all going. My kids were psyched to open their package and start using their stuff. My older son did great with reading his letter he received, and my daughter got to writing back immediately (my littlest one was most excited about coloring in his new coloring book)!

My kids of course wanted to pick some fun things out too, and we sent those off to their pen pals last week. I found I fun little "All About Me" worksheet (thank you Pinterest) for my kids to fill out and include in their package they sent. It was a good prompt for them, as they were suffering from a bad case of What-should-I-wriiiiite-itis the day we sat down to write our first pen pal letters.

We're already planning to find some fun postcards to send while we're on vacation later this month. Photos from summer activities will be fun to send as well. I'm hoping we can get creative and keep it fun. Any writing practice is great, and pen pals are a great way for kids (especially little ones) to understand some of the purposes of print.

Share your creative pen pal writing ideas in the comments. How/what are your kids writing this summer?