Building A [How To Do A Good Baby Storytime] Mystery

Yes, I titled this post with a Sarah McLaughlin reference. Heh.

I just finished my last of three Build Your Baby's Home Library storytimes. We had five kids attend the first week (and only two of whom we'd targeted with our promotions), 13 attend last week (five of whom we'd invited from the daycares and preschools we visited) and 15 come today. And on a rainy day! I hope this means that Lori will have at least that many in her sessions, during the next three Saturdays.

What's really terrific is that, for more than half of the people at this program, this is their introduction to storytimes--if not their introduction to OPPL! So it's even more important than usual to provide a solid, fun, easy-to-get-into experience. For me, that meant planning"Greatest Hits" programs based on what I know works from my Busy Babies. I didn't want to try out too much new stuff!

Lori and I had also spoken about how to reinforce the six early preliteracy skills in these sessions (as we said we would in our proposal to the Rotary Club). We finally decided to NOT make strict outlines or to make the storytime anything like a seminar/workshop. Instead, we would try to seamlessly include prelit skills with our usual patter and fun, rather than pound them home. A couple of examples...

"I love this book for babies because the images are simple, high-contrast and fun to look at. See how Cooper's pointing at the puppies already? That means he's motivated to interact with this book some more. And we definitely want our babies to interact with books. Even if it means trying to digest them, Jacob!" [Then we read Look at the Animals together as a group, doing something different on each page to get the babies interested--counting, pointing, sound effects, sign language, etc.]

"Remember, grown-ups: hearing your voice sing along makes it easier for your little one to pick out the different sounds of the words and tune. And picking out sounds will help their brains be more reading-ready later on! So, a one and a two..." [Then we sung "You Are My Sunshine" to finish up the program. Which was very sweet!]