Day 3 Value adding in library programming #blog12daysxmas

On day 2 I spoke about some of the programs that are now being offered in my branch (and which some of the other branches have taken on board, yay!) and hope to elaborate on these more in future blog posts.

I sometimes think it is so easy to get caught up in not being able to do things, on whether they are sustainable or even able to be implemented.  It's a mind set that is very simple to slip into, much harder to train yourself out of.

I had a discussion with a colleague once about her feelings on the need for us to be cautious with what we offer, as we are not early childhood specialists.  Quite honestly I don't think you need to be an early childhood specialist to offer many of the programs or services that we do. We don't teach, but I don't know of any library that says that they are.  There are many ways that we can add value to children's programs that cost little or no money.  Something that I spoke to staff about implementing this year was Letter of the week as an addition to our Toddler Time program.

Letter flash cards used for Toddler Time

Every week the staff member shows the next letter of the alphabet, pointing to the picture on the card and mentioning one or two other common nouns that start with that letter of the alphabet. The children then take home a colouring sheet about that particular letter. This has the added benefit of prolonging the children's memories of their recent visit to the library.

 The flash cards shown above were very inexpensive to buy but similar can be sourced for free from the internet or, with a little time, made up in Word. Another benefit that has come from this is the professional development of the staff member involved.  12 months ago she would not have thought herself able to run a program on her own, much less add an extra interactive component to it.  For 2013 she now wants to add colours and days of the week to her repertoire :)