Sharing the Secret Sauce: Engaging Early Childhood Educators in Library Storytime Practices

Abstract

If you peek into Kirsten’s preschool classroom in suburban Denver early on a Tuesday morning, you’ll quickly notice that the eager three-year-olds are not the only ones enthusiastically singing, “Go Bananas!”The students bring up flannelboard pieces for Karen Beaumont’s Dini Dinosaur while answering, “What do you think will happen next?” In another story, Ding Dong Gorilla by Nicola O’Byrne, Kirsten and her children gather around the “library lady” who is visiting the classroom.

Young children’s information-seeking practices in center-based childcare

“…Examples of the ways in which libraries provide support for young children in center-based childcare settings include the provision of reading programs and story times at libraries specifically for children in childcare (Arnold, 2002; Hinton and Amodio, 1995); providing story-time outreach (Cahill, 2004; Hinton and Amodio, 1995; Ptacek, 2016) and literacy training (Fehrenbach et al, 1998; Ptacek, 2016) at childcare centers; and sharing the library’s collections with childcare centers through visits from the library’s bookmobile (Hinton and Amodio, 1995) or temporary loans of portions of the library’s collection (Arnold, 2002; Bagley, 2000; Hinton and Amodio, 1995). Libraries also work to support childcare providers by promoting the use of library collections and services for professional development (Edwards and Thornton, 2013; Hinton and Amodio, 1995); providing lists of developmentally appropriate materials to use with children (Hinton and Amodio, 1995); creating and loaning story-time kits that include books and related toys and activities for use with the children under their care (Smuda, 2002); and hosting workshops and other training sessions related to early childhood development (Arnold, 2002) and early literacy (Ghoting et al, 2017; Romero and Armstrong, 2017; Smuda, 2002). However, little attention has been paid to the ways in which young children’s emerging information practices can be similarly supported in center-based childcare settings, either by library services and collections or by their care providers.…”

The literacy-enhancing potential of singing versus spoken language in public library storytimes: A text analytics approach

“…18 out of 20) opening and/or closing with songs to encourage children to demonstrate their phonological awareness. Additionally, librarians have used songs to encourage children to “remember the words” (Romero and Armstrong, 2017: 10) to popular texts as well as to practice the complex vocabulary of denser ones during storytime.…”