Read to a Dog at Shaker Library is an ongoing opportunity for young readers to read to a certified therapy dog. The program is offered on the third Thursday of every month from 4 to 5:30 p.m. and has been running since 2010.
Since 1986, Sonoma County Library's Adult Literacy’s One-to-One program has matched adult learners with a volunteer literacy tutor in their community. The program provides assessment, training and facilities that enable the pair to meet and work toward the learner’s chosen literacy goals on a weekly basis at the library location of their choice.
Dealing with finances is stressful! In fact, a survey from the American Psychological Association shows that money is a more frequent cause of worry than work, family or health issues.
Libraries across the country are empowering people with the knowledge to make sound financial decisions by offering a variety of services, resources, and programs, many of which are spotlighted in the new book, "Rainy Day Ready: Financial Literacy Programs and Tools."
In September teens have busy schedules, and I want our public library to offer a relaxing break and meaningful creative outlets. However, I also strive to design programs where teens can grapple with the topics they are passionate about. Top on the list of pressing concerns is freedom of expression.
Information literacy and media literacy are crucial to student learning. As we have advocated in past blog posts, the process of teaching skills to produce media literate students starts in kindergarten and continues throughout their years as lifelong learners.
Every year in late January or early February, children all over the country celebrate the 100th day of school with all sorts of clever projects — bringing 100 items to school, wearing “100th-day” glasses, listing 100 things they love to do. Why not add a reading activity to this list? Ask a group of younger students to read 100 books on the 100th day of school in one hour!
In Cobb County, officials say about 20 percent of the 50,000 elementary school children alone would fail a vision screening, and about 8,000 will need glasses.
​Cobb libraries collaborate with the Atlanta office of the national nonprofit Vision to Learn (VTL) to host vision clinics for low-income communities. VTL provides on-site mobile vision clinics for children. The visits include free vision screenings and eye exams. Kids who get eyeglass prescriptions select free frames, and their new glasses are later delivered.
Is there anything sweeter than a new baby? The arrival of a new child is always cause for excitement — especially because it means there is a new reader to welcome into the world!
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.
Read to Swim is a joint summer program with the Yukon Public Library and the local community pool that strives to get children familiar with the library space and reading during their break. It took place from July 6, 2018, through the end of August 2018.
After reading for one hour at the library, kids are given a voucher for free admission to the pool.
Something we notice a lot here at the LP Fisher Public Library (and you probably do, too) is that when many of our young patrons get their first library card they have a difficult time signing the back. And we're not just talking preschoolers who are still learning to form letters — we're talking preteens and teenagers. Sometimes even adults.
We have partnered for the past five years with our local hospital, Adena Health System, and several other local organizations to provide a healthy component to our annual summer reading program, Bookworm. Children can work on health challenges as well as reading challenges, earning prizes for both.
Looking to add some movement to your story times? Interested in physical literacy, but not sure where to start? Here are six groovy titles to get you off on the right foot (pun intended). You can find more kid-friendly physical literacy book reviews here. So gather some kid-friendly instruments and be prepared to make some noise!
Summer is nearly upon us. It’s the season where life slows down, vacations happen, students joyfully turn off their early morning alarms and teachers can catch their breath for a few moments. It is also a time when students are less likely to read.
As students get busier, both in and out of school, how can we promote a lifelong love for reading? Here are a three program ideas to help promote literacy throughout your school.Â
Libraries know all about the “summer slide.” We’ve addressed summer learning loss with reading clubs and other educational programs for decades. As a matter of fact, some families have come to view libraries as a sort of summer school or educational camp during the longest, hottest days of the year. Whoever thinks summers are slow at a library has never visited a youth department in June, July or August!
Ask most boys today if they want to play with paper dolls and you might get a scrunched-up face in response, but paper dolls haven't always been seen as such a gendered activity. In fact, paper dolls have existed since paper was invented and come from many different cultures around the world.
The staff at the LP Fisher Public Library in Woodstock, N.B., wanted to do something really unique this year to celebrate Canadian Library Month in October. We also wanted to do a Halloween activity, while being mindful of the many families in our community that don’t celebrate it, or are newcomers to the country and might be uncomfortable with some of our more macabre traditions.