The holidays always bring a lot of traffic to our libraries, and December 2016 was no exception. We offered Light Up The Holidays: Stories and Crafts as a children's program in all of our eight branches and even one of our Bookmobile stops. The program covered four different holidays that fell during the same week last year.
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.
Do you want your livestreams to look more professional? Whether you’re using Zoom, Facebook Live or YouTube, these tech products are relatively affordable, easy to use, and can greatly improve your virtual content.
Matt Mazur, co-founder and director of Turtle Dance Music, shares tech products in a 10-minute video, or scroll below to view highlights.
Libraries are always working to find ways to meet our customers’ needs, especially during times of crisis. Nearly 18 months into the pandemic, we continue to face the unique challenges brought on by COVID-19. One of those challenges is mask-wearing.
You don’t need expensive gadgets or software to make your virtual story times a hit. What makes your story times really shine are the low-tech ways you connect with your audience, says Matt Mazur, a children’s entertainer with a graduate degree in autism intervention and early childhood development, and co-founder and director of Turtle Dance Music.
Read on for seven low-tech ways to make your virtual story times engaging, or watch Matt’s full 15-minute video below.
The coronavirus pandemic has been a source of fear and anxiety for many of us, including children. But we can also treat the experience of living through the pandemic as an opportunity to talk to children and their families about resilience and collective action. Earth Day 2020 is the perfect occasion, and you need to go no further than your library’s YouTube or Facebook page.
We began having weekly virtual story times using the Facebook Live platform on March 20, shortly after closing for the COVID-19 virus. We wanted to give people a chance to be together synchronously, even if it was virtual.
We included books, interactive songs, fingerplays, dances, puppets and craft ideas. We also used a guitar and a ukulele and encouraged interaction by having participants pick which instruments we would use for certain songs.
As your library moves many of its services online in response to the coronavirus pandemic, you may be wondering about the legality of posting recorded story times to your Facebook or YouTube page. The answer lies in “fair use.”
Saturday mornings in our small town are not the busiest time at the LP Fisher Public Library, especially in the summer. People have either gone to the lake, are working in their gardens, or are at the farmers market. We are situated in a fairly rural area and agriculture (both marget garden and industrial) makes up a fair bit of our economy. So in 2018, we decided to try going to where the farmers and shoppers are — the market.
Story Time in the Orchard is an all-ages story time hosted by Boyertown Community Library and Frecon Farms. It is held outdoors on Thursdays at 9 a.m. from mid-June through October, weather permitting.
This program enhances awareness of local agriculture, provides a family experience of nature and boosts health literacy while having fun.
Over the past few years at Skokie Public Library, we’ve revamped our programming for the under-2 set. We think we’ve come up with a great way to serve young families. We call it Baby Wednesdays, and here’s how it works.
Presented in partnership with the Autism Society of Greater Akron, Sensory-Friendly Storytime engages participants through the use of story, music and movement. Programs offer educational, literacy and social opportunities for children of all ages with differing abilities, their siblings, parents/caregivers and their typically developing peers. Each program includes:
Librarians generally don’t ask if storytelling is an infringement of copyright. Don’t worry — it isn’t. But have you ever considered why? Telling a story aloud to a group of people technically is a public performance, one of the exclusive rights of the rights holder. Rights holder could sue libraries for an unauthorized public performance, but thankfully, they don’t. Why?
The benefit of storytelling to the public far outweighs the interests of the rights holder to collect a fee. Storytelling is a fair use. Digging down a bit deeper, let’s explain why this is so.
