Early Learning

EARLY LEARNING OUTREACH AND COLLABORATION

Fletcher Free Library, Burlington VT visits local Head Start with the 1000 Books Before Kindergarten Program Photo: Fletcher Free Library

Play-Based Learning &
Reimaging School Readiness

Singing & Storytelling:
Tell Me A Story The King County Library System story time companion for parents and caregivers.

StoryBlocks A collection of 30-60 second videos featuring songs, rhymes, and fingerplays parents and educators can share with young children. Includes 9 languages.

Jbrary A YouTube playlist of songs, rhymes, and fingerplays parents and caregivers can share with young children.

Let's Get (Early) Lit Resources for readers, librarians, and all lovers of children's literature

Bring Vroom to Your Community. Free easy-to-use learning tips for children 5 and under.

Skill Building Book Tips to print from Mind in the Making

Day By Day Family Literacy Calendar

Families, caregivers, educators, and librarians can use the Day By Day Family Literacy Calendar at home, library, classroom, or on the go. With a perpetual calendar featuring songs, activities, book suggestions, and videos, Day By Day supports early literacy skills and helps young children get ready for school.
Collaborators and Support: The Day By Day Family Literacy Calendar began as a project of the South Carolina State Library, developed in partnership with many agencies and organizations, and primarily funded by a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The State Library of Ohio customized the branding and state-centric content of the calendar for Ohio to create Day By Day Ohio and developed an open source generic calendar for other states to customize. The Ohio project was funded in part with federal LSTA funding from IMLS. The calendar was edited by students of the UT-Knoxville School of Information Sciences and members of the TN Library Association Children and Young Adult Roundtable under direction of the Tennessee State Library & Archives.

Media Literacy in Early Childhood Report

Executive Summary
The TEC (Technology in Early Childhood) Center at Erikson Institute in partnership with the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), the Association for
Library Service to Children (ALSC), and the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) was awarded a grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) in 2018 to host two national forum meetings to discuss media literacy in early childhood with experts and practitioners with the objective of developing materials to support the understanding and teaching of media literacy in early childhood.
This report recognizes and builds upon the extensive media literacy educational materials, books, research, and policies that have been developed to date. The framework builds upon many existing media literacy-focused frameworks including
Teaching Tolerance’s Digital Literacy Framework (2017) and Project Look Sharp’s Process of Media Literacy (2018). The child development and children’s media use findings bring together decades of research from various fields in order to understand media literacy in early childhood. The cultural considerations, activities, and tips highlight existing educational materials and concerns raised by practitioners who serve children in a variety of settings. The barriers and solutions to sustaining this work shed light on the challenges practitioners and caregivers face daily.
The intention of this Media Literacy in Early Childhood Report is to utilize media literacy, child development, and early education knowledge to develop educational materials and advocate for support for media literacy education in early childhood. This report provides:

an updated definition of media literacy in early childhood;
an explanation of developmentally appropriate media literacy education for children
under age 8;
background on the developmental abilities and expectations of young children with
regards to media use and media literacy; and
guidelines to support media literacy in early childhood.

tec-medialiteracy-report.pdf
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Stay & Play Toolkit

Stay & Play is a library service model developed to serve and support the informal child care providers (friends, family or neighbors). Those providing informal care can often lack access to access to the information, resources, and support available to formal, licensed child care providers.1

In 2016 the Oakland Public Library received a Packard Foundation grant to create programming specifically designed for family, friend and neighbor child care providers.The Oakland Play Cafe was then piloted around California as the Stay and Play. Stay & Play builds on the early learning foundations and best practices promoted, for more than a decade, by the California State Library’s Early Learning with Families (ELF) initiative

The five components are listed below and further explained in Implementing Stay & Play.

Outreach: Targeted and focused outreach to family, friend, and neighbor child care providers
Play: Meaningful play opportunities that are child-directed and encourage caregiver and child interactions
Story Time: Library story times specifically designed for informal child care providers and the children in their care
Resources: Programming, resource materials, and/or community experts to better equip informal child care providers with child development, safety, and early learning information
Food: Provision of food or opportunities to accommodate the food needs of children and their caregivers

Implementation:

Early Learning Approach: Learn about the underlying principles of Stay & Play.
Community and Library Assessment: Use these tools to strategically get to know FFNs in your community and determine your library’s capacity.
Design and Outreach: Implement the logic model to intentionally design your Stay & Play services.
Program Delivery: Explore the nuts and bolts of creating your space and then running an in-person Stay & Play program series.
Evaluation and Continuous Improvement: Discover practical tools to plan your evaluation strategy to support your program design, and to complete the evaluation effectively.

1 The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, 2015. Informal Child Care in California: Current Arrangements and Future Needs.

How Play Helps Math Learning

Becoming acquainted with common and hidden hazards in your library, home and community can help you take important safety steps now to prevent a tragedy later. Consumernotice.org Child Safety Tips

Ways to reach out and work together:

*See side story Underlined-Click on for linked story

Boston Basics Chattanooga Basics
Head Start*
Library Baby Shower
Reimagining School Readiness Toolkit from Center for Childhood Creativity at the Bay Area Discovery Museum
Stork Storytime READS*
Storytime on the Move:
Daycare
Homeless Shelter
Laundry & Literacy
WIC Programs
Toy Library Network

Kindergarten GearUp

For those of you currently facilitating school readiness programs in the library, or if you have plans to launch a school readiness program, here is one model that could provide a template for your curriculum. Kindergarten Gear Up is a kindergarten readiness program developed by the San Diego County Library to help both kids and caregivers prepare for kindergarten. It is targeted toward families whose children have not attended preschool. Kindergarten Gear Up is a series of ten one-hour sessions that can be scheduled once a week for ten weeks, or twice a week for five weeks. There are separate activities for children and caregivers, so successful implementation requires two programming spaces and at least two to three staff members. All the Kindergarten Gear Up content is freely available for any library to adapt into its programming. Content includes detailed lesson plans, a library of activities, booklists, caregiver handouts and discussion questions (in English and Spanish), posters, fliers, activity sheets, and more. Please note that this is a time-intensive program series. If you maintain a full program calendar, you will probably want to replace a current program rather than add Kindergarten Gear Up.

Online Storytime Scavenger Hunt Using Book Award Books

Here is an example using the New Hampshire Ladybug Picture Book Award Books:

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Reimagining Program Development and Evaluation
Looking for a structured but flexible approach that facilitates program development, evaluation, and fast-cycle iteration. Check out the IDEAS Impact Framework toolkit

The IDEAS Impact Framework provides that approach, drawing on existing research and development tools and applying them in new ways to set a higher bar for program development and evaluation.
IDEAS Stands for:

Innovate
Develop
Evaluate
Adapt
Scale

New Toolkit to Address Accessibility to Technology
February 6, 2021 ALSC Library Service to Underserved Children and Their Caregivers

ALSC - Professional Tools for Librarians Serving Youth

Photo: Fletcher Free Library

Mary Danko, Director
Fletcher Free Library
Burlington, VT

Fletcher Free Library, Burlington VT - Champlain Valley Head Start

The Fletcher Free Library launched the 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten Program in partnership with Champlain Valley Head Start. This pilot supports kindergarten readiness by fostering an interest in reading & will increase the guardian/child bond by supporting parents in reading with their children by improving access to books at home. Providing free books to children will immediately benefit families, while accompanying reading logs offer a fun & interactive way to measure long-term impact. The pilot will reach Head Start sites in Burlington's New North End, a neighborhood that houses many New American families. This area, 3 miles from the library, has requested satellite services. This program allows the library a unique opportunity to creatively meet the needs of an under-served population. Grants have helped us purchase imprinted book bags for the children to take home weekly, books for the bags, a fall family kickoff event to celebrate reading, incentives, & inclusion of an additional Head Start preschool & in-house library launch of the program to reach all Burlington youth. 45% of
Burlington children speak a language other than English at home; 45% receive free or reduced lunch.

Hosting Outdoor Story Time in All Kinds of Weather

Polly Mahoney from the Cook Memorial Library in Tamworth, NH reports having great success in transferring their story time to an outdoor format. For helpful hints and some of their favorite outdoor story times:

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Brain Breaks - Action Songs for Children - Move and Freeze Popular children’s brain breaks, action and dance song, Move and Freeze. Move and Freeze is from the award-winning CD, “Brain Boogie Boosters.”

GoNoodle is free for teachers, parents, and kids! In addition to energizing content, GoNoodle has 300+ dance videos, mindfulness activities, and more engaging videos for kids!

Embedding EDI into Early Literacy Programming

Here is a link to the recording : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YCv-l9IsS0ckfU8oH7vtrDD1UZej-VCx/view?usp=sharing

Here is a link to the slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10FP0O5qCA-LcT-YtNft9XasGEL7j-ggg/view?usp=drive_web

Stork Storytime READS

As creator of Stork Storytime READS (formerly Womb Literacy), Jennifer Jordebrek says, why wait until baby and chaos arrives to impart early literacy skills information to new parents. Adjusting to being a new parent is overwhelming. Physicians are trying to send the good message, but even well baby check-ups can be stressful. Why not encourage a reading routine now with expecting parents?
Jennifer Jordebrek is the Assistant Director at the North Liberty Community Library in North Liberty, IA. On the libraries website, the stork storytime page makes it easy to replicate this program at your library with a Librarians Tool Kit, podcasts and information on their annual Stork Storytime EXPO. Jennifer Jordebrek also pointed out that 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten is a great follow up to this program. Thank you Jennifer for this great resource that can work at any size library.

EARLY LEARNING OUTREACH AND COLLABORATION

Play-Based Learning & ​Reimaging School Readiness

Day By Day Family Literacy Calendar

Media Literacy in Early Childhood Report

Stay & Play Toolkit

How Play Helps Math Learning

​Ways to reach out and work together:

Kindergarten GearUp

​Online Storytime Scavenger Hunt Using Book Award Books

New Toolkit to Address Accessibility to TechnologyFebruary 6, 2021 ALSC Library Service to Underserved Children and Their Caregivers

ALSC - ​Professional Tools for Librarians Serving Youth

​Fletcher Free Library, Burlington VT - Champlain Valley Head Start ​​

Hosting Outdoor Story Time in All Kinds of Weather

Embedding EDI into Early Literacy Programming

Stork Storytime READS

Play-Based Learning &
Reimaging School Readiness

Ways to reach out and work together:

Online Storytime Scavenger Hunt Using Book Award Books

New Toolkit to Address Accessibility to Technology
February 6, 2021 ALSC Library Service to Underserved Children and Their Caregivers

ALSC - Professional Tools for Librarians Serving Youth

Fletcher Free Library, Burlington VT - Champlain Valley Head Start