ECRR Concept of the Week

An important thing a caregiver can do for a child is spend quality time reading stories that stimulate children’s interest. Let them pick the book. It is okay if they want to “read” to you and tell you what they think is happening on the pages. This allows them an opportunity to build narrative skills which is an important early literacy concept. -Amy Dawson, Youth Services Librarian, Catawba County Library

May 24 Storytime @ SW

This week I selected various animal books and talked a little about narative skills and more about letter recognition.
(Before Storytime)
I had a new group of 5 (1 caregiver 3 3yr olds and an 18 month old. They arrived early so I was able to introduce myself and sort of break the ice with the children. This is when I introduced letter recognition. We told each other our names and what letters our names started with, and then what other letters were in our names. It did not take long for them to start looking at the books selected for storytime. We then discovered that Christopher and Chicken not only starts with the same 1st letter but that it started with the same first 2 letters. One of the books I used was Chickens to the Rescue by John Himmelman. I also used letter recognition by letting the children pick out a puppet, identifying what the puppet was and what letter it started with. When we figured that out I changed the words to the Along Comes Mr. Alligator action rhyme and Mr Alligator snapped that rabbit, groundhog, lamb, etc.... right out of that tree.

Once storytime started I introduced narative skills. We used our narative skills a lot during this storytime. While reading Chickens to the Rescue and The Big Sneeze I encouraged the children to tell me what they thought would happen next. After showing them them pictures it was very entertaining to hear their interpretations. One of my favorite ways to get a response is to ask what would you do.....(i.e. if chickens were in your kitchen cooking a mea)l? What would your mom and dad do....( if chickens were in the kitchen)? Some of the respnses are priceless.

Using the concepts of ECRR seems to be really working. Although I have used some of the concepts all along, the knowledge of ECRR with those and new concepts gives us the potential to really make a difference. I have a whole new way of thinking when selecting materials for storytime and I have a focus. Immediately after picking up a book I go into ECRR mode.
So far so good!

April @
SW Library

Where The Wild Things Are

Thursdays story time was based on one of my favorite children's books Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak which I am sure we are all familiar. I love this book because when doing it with small children you can really have a great time when the wild rumpus begins. That being said, let me tell you that I was not overly inspired yesterday when I went to do the music but could not figure out how to use the CD player. Anyway, I think the kids had a good time. As far as ECRR, this book is important because there is very little text and children have to use their imaginations to guess what is going on in the story based on the pictures. That is why every time I use this book with kids, I have use the scene in the middle to dance, swing from tree to tree and have a parade. This will give them a connection to what is going on during the "silent" pages. Also, I always try to talk to them at the end of the story to get their interpretations about what they thought was going on. Was it a dream? Did Max really do to the land of the wild things? Preschoolers might be young, but they are not too young that you can't discuss plot with them.

For the rest of the program, we read books about other "wild things" such as wild animals. I had the children to act like monkeys, tigers, alligators, birds, and snakes. One of the things that I have been doing with the story times is allowing someone different to pick out a book that they might want to read. Most of the children are too young to read, but they see the pretty covers and will let me read it to the group. This has been good because each week I have the kids asking me to pick out a book. This week, a little girl who is normally very shy selected something that she found of interest. I was glad to see her come out of her little shell. It tells me that story times are not lost on her.

I ended the program by giving each child a bookmark with a zoo animal on it that was left over from some other program. I told the kids that it is no use having a bookmark without a book and invited everyone to come upstairs. Several of the little girls sat down on the floor in front of me and asked me to read another story after others had left. We talked about crazy pets and I was able to hear about fingernail polish, a fish, some crazy dogs and how a snake would make a good pet (the mom didn't agree).

StSt Cinco de Mayo

Hi everybody,
This week @ Saint we did Cinco de Mayo as our theme for ToddlerTime and Preschool storytimes. I explained at the start that we were working with the ECRR literacy skill of vocabulary this week and explained what it was and why it was important. I had note cards that had key words from the books I used. One side was English, "Grandma" and the other was in Espanol, "Abuelito". After the story we looked at the cards and the children responded back with the word both in Spanish and English, pictures were also on the card. We also had # and color cards and I incorporated those into our songs and finger plays. I created these cards using Word and Clip Art. At the end I asked what Fiesta was and most of the children responded with Party. I would say they were able to recall 1/2 of the words used without the cards during our review. After our coloring time the children had access to the cards to look at and play with. Three of the 17 children did this. I am still having a problem with two of my daycare providers using this time as a chat fest during storytime. One is working on her teaching degree, she should know better. She will be moving to the Vale area by August, April be prepared they'll be coming your way. At times it is frustrating to try to convince our audiences that what we are doing in our story times is a bit more valuable than "babysitting", as we implement ECRR, I hope that this will become more apparent.
Donna

Today for storytime, we had box day. I think using props as part of the storytime is extremely important to reinforce what we are talking about. All of the books that I used were about boxes and the many wonderful things you can do with a box. This week, I collected (with the help of some wonderful staff members - Lidia, Mason) many boxes of all different sizes. You could tell during storytime that the kids were itching to get in the boxes. Halfway through the storytime, I let the kids play in the boxes. They loved it. I have no doubt that they will never look at a box in the same way again.

Southwest Storytime

I just observed April's storytime and Oh-My-God it was great! She told parents about Amy's upcoming ECRR workshop and set out the brochures for them to pick up. She also briefly explained the benefits of shifting the storytimes to reflect a more ECRR bases. The storytime itself was awesome, using print awareness, narrative skills, lots of vocabulary and phonological awareness.

Kudos to you April

from Lidia

Last Thursday during storytime I was able to talk with a couple of parents about ECRR. The basics of what I told them was that we are going to start integrating some educational/learning skills for their children based on ECRR. I told them a little about brain development and the improtance of early literacy and learning. One of the moms seemed very excited and eager to learn anything we could "teach" her. She is a new homeschool mom and she is very unsure of herself. I told her I would be incorporating some of the techniques during regular storytime. I also told her that we are hoping to have some workshops geared towards parents and caregivers that will provide more knowledge about the concepts of ECRR .

I would like to get some of the brochures. It is a great reinforcement to any information we give.

April