Do you provide story time for kids during the week?
If not, why not?
If so, when do you have it? Any suggestions for those of us who have not figured it out yet?
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We have a weekly library time for our preschool, but not for church members. It's something I would like to start.
I provide a regiular weekly story hour each Wednesday afternoon. I am their first activity after resting time on that day. Our daycare is small with only 3 classes. I have 3 yr olds, 4 year olds and then toddlers and 2 yr olds. I incorporate music for all groups. With toddlers I do mostly flannel stories, finger story games and puppets. Our favorite for the fall for all groups was I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. I have the hand puppet with small stuffies of each item she swallows. The item goes into her mouth and stays in a little pocket until the story is finished. 4 year olds used paper bags to make their own puppet with a slit at her mouth where they stuffed a small picture of item she swallowed.
The Little Blue Truck is a story that teaches kindness and the children make the noises ot the animals as the blue truck makes it route down the road. They loved how the big, mean dumptruck gets stuck in the mud and the little blue truck tries to pull him out of the mud. Of course, he couldnt because he wasnt big enough. But the story shows how important working together to show frienship and kindness is the secret to life. There are so few wordsin the story that 4 year olds loved taking turns to bethe story teller and showing the pictures as they "read" the book.
i get many ideas from a Facebook group called Flannel Friday.
Our preschool/ Kindergarten is part of our church ministry, as is the library. Our library is totally self-checkout. I obtained class rosters with teachers' names on them and put copies in a notebook with dividers by teacher. Teachers bring their students in once a week for story time and to check out a book. Teacher just has to flip to her page in the notebook and put the barcode of the book the child is checking out. I go in a couple of times a week and enter the names and titles in the system. We do not have enough volunteers to man the library each day for kids. We are hoping this process will work smoothly. We also have Book Bunch from 6:15-6:30 every Wednesday night after Wednesday night suppers and before Wednesday night activities. The preschool director gets a volunteer from the congregation to read a story to the kids. If their parents are with them, they can checkout books also at that time.
I have noticed an increase in children in the library after Wednesday supper. I think I will try a Book Bunch program in January. I want to kick off with a registration and a reading competition for the month of January. Children on Wednesday night usually have parents around and are regulars. They go to Music and Missions after but usually have 15 to 30 minutes after supper, depending on how fast they eat. These children are K-6 brades. We have teens around too but I will have to something else for them!
Our church has a mother's day out program. On Mondays, the teachers bring their classes to the library at different times and we have a story time plus we let them look at books we have pulled for them to handle.
they are very young children and we usually provide a basketfull of books They do not pull books from the shelves.
We have done this program for about 10 years and the teachers love it and the children learn a little about the library.
Joy Cryer
Tallowood Baptist Church
Houston, Texas 77024
In the past we had storytime during the week one morning a week. We did a couple stories, song, or two and a craft that related to story (say fire prevention week read story about firefighters and one about a pig firefighter then craft outline of big letter F glue red/yellow/orange tissue paper on it along with part of shoelace (hose) and silvery blue 'water' and there was a song with motions about putting out fire.
With covid and change of pastor, we have not started back but would like to.
Last couple of years we have just done storytime on Wed night with preschoolers once a month and sometimes different age groups on other Wed, nights. Same set up on Sunday morning. They each have a week assigned and story relates to what thet are learning during the month but they don't all come every month.
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