Programming
Programming
Weekly Events
Little Bookworms Story Time (Ages 3-5)
This story time uses interactive books that get the children involved, such as through movement or repeated phrases, songs and rhymes that encourage motor and cognitive development, as well as flannel stories that build visual literacy skills. This program ends with a craft.
Babies & Books (Ages 0-2)
This story time uses books with bright colors, large words, and simple sentences. This program has movement, such as bounce rhymes, to keep the attention of the younger children as well as develop loving relationships with parents and guardians, short flannel stories or peekaboo flannel games to create visual literacy skills, and group play to allow babies to socialize together along with the parents and caregivers.
Saturday Storytime (All Ages)
This program is similar to Little Bookworms Story Time in its design. I use similar style books that are a bit longer due to the older ages of children that attend the story time. Due to the large size of this program, a craft is not provided. However, I do include literacy tips for all parents in attendance.
After School Adventure Club
(Kindergarten - Second Grade)
This program uses entertaining books that engages children and fosters literacy skill development. One of the goals of this program is to help children realize that reading is fun and the library is too. In addition to reading books, games are played to help develop social and gross motor skills. This program is for children in grades Kindergarten through Second only; their parents do not attend the program with them.
Rockstar Readers (Second - Fourth Grade)
This program was developed to meets the needs of the library's community. The first half of each session starts with a skill building game, such as Sight Word Bingo or Snowball Sentences. Then, the second half of the session is spent reading a short book and practicing different skills, such as Word Solving or Comprehension. The program lasts for about an hour and a take-home tip sheet is given out at the end of the program. This program was also developed with technology in mind. Students participating in this program read using the OverDrive app on Mini iPads.
Monthly Events
LEGO Mania (Ages 5-12)
This is a theme-based program that gives children and tweens information on a topic, such as robots, and then allows them to build objects based on the theme with LEGO bricks. I create a PowerPoint with information on the topic as well as applicable videos to demonstrate my facts. At the end of the presentation, I inspire the participants with pictures of creations other people have made. They then get approximately thirty minutes to build their creations before they present them to the group and give us a demonstration on how it would work. I also provide book talks on items available in our collection and display them for check out.
Southeast Explorers at the Library (Homeschool)
This is a program I designed myself and started in January 2015. The goal of this program is to provide an atmosphere for home-educated children to socialize and gain hands-on experience with specific topics. Like with the LEGO program, this program starts with a short PowerPoint presentation on a specific topic, such as space, and then the children are invited to participate in different hands-on activities.
Book Surfers: Kids Book Club (Ages 8-12)
For this program, I use popular titles as well as titles nominated for the Volunteer State Book Awards presented by the Tennessee Library Association. Each month, children sign up and read the selected book. We meet up at the end of the month to discuss the book by playing fun games and sometimes even Skype or chat in person with the author.
Wonder Corp (Ages 8-12)
This program was created due to a need for more activities at the library for Tweens, children ages 8-12. The Children's staff noticed that many children were "aging out" of regularly scheduled programs and that those children were still visiting the library regularly. Wonder Corp was developed to give Tweens a dedicated space to hangout in the library and discover more about their likes and themselves through specifically designed programs.
READing Paws (Kindergarten and up)
Once a month, a therapy dog, Zarth the German Shepherd, visits the library so that children can read to him. He and his handler are here for an hour each time, and parents pre-register their child for an assigned time slot. This program is designed to help all readers become more confident in their reading ability as they cuddle with an animal. You can read an article from a local magazine in which this program was featured.