Ministry to Nursing Homes and Church Kindergartens

Nursing Homes: A few years ago one of our avid-reader church members was in an assisted living and was willing to "oversee" a small library there. We took two or three shelves of good fiction to them. When she didn't like the way the books were displayed in the lobby, she decided to have the library operate from her room! :) It worked fine that way until she died. Then the books were brought back to the library. They had already been removed from the library database. They could have stayed at the nursing home, but the family didn't know.

Kindergarten/Preschool: We do also minister to our church preschool/kindergarten. For the past seven or eight years we have had the 5-year-old kindergarten classes come to the library on Thursday morning. They have a book read to them and then they are allowed to check out a book for a one-week period. They bring the book back the next week and are allowed to check out another. No book, no checkout. The reader talks about care of the books, parts of the book, etc. She reads a variety of books, starting with short ones for short attention spans. We try to emphasize not trying to fix the book (use tape, etc) if there is an accident and a page gets torn. Accidents happen. We ask them to just tell the librarian because we have special ways to do book repair.

Unfortunately, we don't have a 5 year- old class this year, so we are reading to the 4 year-old groups. We are waiting a few weeks to see their maturity level to decide when to allow them to check out books.

We have been very pleased with our informal approach, and the teachers say the children look forward to coming to the library. Just a few weeks ago my reader friend and I were eating out on Sunday and a little girl came up to the table and just stood there. Her mom popped around the corner and said "She said you were the ladies that read to them in the church library." And so we were! We get stopped and get a hug from the little ones who have already gone to big school and we really enjoy knowing that we had a little bit of influence on their lives.

Replies

Sandra Fitts September 28, 2015 19:43

Nursing Homes: A few years ago one of our avid-reader church members was in an assisted living and was willing to "oversee" a small library there. We took two or three shelves of good fiction to them. When she didn't like the way the books were displayed in the lobby, she decided to have the library operate from her room! :) It worked fine that way until she died. Then the books were brought back to the library. They had already been removed from the library database. They could have stayed at the nursing home, but the family didn't know.

Kindergarten/Preschool: We do also minister to our church preschool/kindergarten. For the past seven or eight years we have had the 5-year-old kindergarten classes come to the library on Thursday morning. They have a book read to them and then they are allowed to check out a book for a one-week period. They bring the book back the next week and are allowed to check out another. No book, no checkout. The reader talks about care of the books, parts of the book, etc. She reads a variety of books, starting with short ones for short attention spans. We try to emphasize not trying to fix the book (use tape, etc) if there is an accident and a page gets torn. Accidents happen. We ask them to just tell the librarian because we have special ways to do book repair.

Unfortunately, we don't have a 5 year- old class this year, so we are reading to the 4 year-old groups. We are waiting a few weeks to see their maturity level to decide when to allow them to check out books.

We have been very pleased with our informal approach, and the teachers say the children look forward to coming to the library. Just a few weeks ago my reader friend and I were eating out on Sunday and a little girl came up to the table and just stood there. Her mom popped around the corner and said "She said you were the ladies that read to them in the church library." And so we were! We get stopped and get a hug from the little ones who have already gone to big school and we really enjoy knowing that we had a little bit of influence on their lives.

This reply was deleted.