Storytime

CLEL'S new site, www.StoryBlocks.org, has videos of several songs that would be wonderful shared between parent and child, or in a library storytime.  Young children LOVE to sing, so why not include several songs in your storytime? Singing is a perfect way to reinforce phonological awareness and introduce new vocabulary.

As we know, sharing rhyming books is a great way to promote phonological awareness, or, the ability to hear and play with the smaller sounds in a word.  Younger children may especially enjoy reciting favorite nursery rhymes, and for storytimes with older preschoolers, ask them to fill in the rhyming word (or make up a sill

Personally, I find letter knowledge one of the more difficult skills to highlight in storytime.  Many alphabet books just don't have enough of a story to make them good read-alouds, and since I only see my storytime kids once a month, highlighting a specific letter for every storytime won't work for me.  But I have found a few ways to highlight letters:

Denver Public Library has posted several videos on its YouTube page in which patrons talk about why they love the library.  Check out

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CLEL members who were able to attend last November's annual meeting heard about the latest LSTA grant project we are working on, which is to create a website with videos of rhymes/fingerplays and songs with early literacy tips.  Patricia Froehlich, Youth Services Senior Consultant with the Colorado State Library, has submitted this report on CLEL's progress on the grant so far:

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