As a new school year gets underway, many parents are wondering what they can do to help their children become readers.
Public libraries have always been a great resource for families and communities, offering tools and resources that help children develop a love of reading.
The Grand Forks & District Public Library offers a welcoming, child-friendly space with little chairs, cushions, colourful tables and a puppet theatre and puppets; all the right size for growing minds.
Our new picture book display is continuously changing; offering classic treasures as well as the best, recently-published works.
Preschool storytime at the library is a fabulous way to make learning and literacy fun. We offer a weekly storytime where parents and children can take part in engaging stories using high-quality picture books, rhymes and songs.
Oral storytelling is also used to great effect, utilizing props such as puppets, felt stories and even pretend food!
The Grand Forks library can also provide tips for parents and caregivers on how to select and use library materials with their children. Look for our brochures at the checkout counter.
At the library we do our best to make learning a fun and interactive activity.
We have a large collection of storytime boxes with a variety of themes. Each bin contains books, CDs, puppets, puzzles, felt stories and games. Anybody with a library card can sign out one of the boxes, just like you would sign out a library book, and then you can keep it for three weeks.
These have become a very popular resource in our library, with new theme boxes being created and are a very helpful tool for delivering storytime in your own living room.
Storytime is such a valuable program. By capturing a child’s interest and imagination early, librarians intuitively believe that they help children discover that libraries and literacy can be an important and enjoyable part of their lives.
We also believe that young children who become regular library users will benefit from the meaningful early literacy experiences available through storytime and that this will allow children to develop the early literacy, communication and social skills needed to be ready to learn by the time they enter school.
Our fall storytime program will resume on Oct. 7 from 10:15 to 11:00 a.m. and will run until Christmas. We are also excited to present the 11th annual Festive Family Storytime, in partnership with The Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy, on Thursday, Dec. 8 at 6:30 p.m. Like our Facebook page – Grand Forks and District Public Library – and we will inform you of any new events we have coming up.
– Submitted by Lizanne Eastwood