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childrens program

Mindfulness Story Time

Photograph of two kids sitting on green yoga mats facing an open laptop screen. They have their arms above their heads in a sitting yoga pose.

I developed a mindfulness story time curriculum during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing from my own experience using yoga as a coping mechanism, and based on my work as a children’s librarian.

I knew we were seeing unprecedented levels of stress among children, and while mindfulness webinars proliferated for staff and working adults, I wanted to think about ways in which I could bring concepts of mindfulness to existing children’s programming.

Spalding/Sign Language

Child signing a letter in front of a blackboard

Spalding/Sign Language is a year-long humanities program for kindergarteners. Our goal is to inspire a love of reading and offer a distinctly different idea for teaching literacy from the classroom. We have been able to do this by teaching letter sounds using the phonetic Spalding method and American Sign Language (ASL).

Sign language is a fabulous way to communicate. For those students who need alternate ways to communicate in front of others, it is the perfect solution. Even those students who don’t have any inhibitions love learning to speak in sign language.

Knitting Workshops for Kids

Student getting help from teacher with a another student knitting

Children (ages 8 to 11) signed up for a series of beginning knitting workshops taught by older adult volunteers. Over three sessions, children learned basic knitting techniques that led to a completed project. Each session was led by five adult volunteers and was limited to 20 children.

Our first series — Knit a Kitty — was so successful that we have since offered three more. The workshops filled up quickly, and most children returned to attend subsequent classes.

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