Also, do many churches have reading time for children? If so, what time of the week and how did you develop it? Would you consider it a ministry of the church or just an offering to parents to encourage reading?
Denise Roberts
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This is a good question. I had a volunteer appear on my doorstep who offered to host a story time as part of service hours she needed to perform for another organization. ( Praise God!) We will meet with the Coordinator for Children's Faith Formation to build out a program. There are various groups that meet at the Church during the week so we will probably do something during a weekday with one of the groups.
I've found everyone's comments useful in helping me think about a story time -- I have no experience with it at all.
I do Story Time for the six classes of PreK-3 and PreK-4 children in our Weekday Children's Program. Each class comes once a month. I also do a story time for 4-8 year olds once a month after school. In the summer, I have Story Time for 4-8 year olds every Tuesday morning. The WCP story times are just the story. The ones for Parishioners in general include a craft and sometimes a song.
We just consider this part of the Library Ministry.
We are beginning a "story time" option to our Sunday School classes on a rotation. We are going to start with our 3-4 yr olds and hopefully expand to include more classes. By offering this during the time our children are a captive audience, we hope to generate more interest in the library. Our plan is to start by visiting the classes with a wide selection of books, let them pick one to be read aloud, and invite them to visit the library with their parents. We will give them a "free pass" to turn in to the library to recieve a small prize when they visit and check out a book. After the initial visit, the classes will follow a rotation schedule to visit the library during Sunday School for story time.
We do consider this a ministry of our church, and our hope is that the library will grow to become a vital resource to young parents.
I would also like to know what age groups those of you target when you have a reading or story time for children.