Branded Interactive Early Literacy Learning Centers: From Grand Places to Table Top Spaces
Presented by Michelle Minerd Clark, Kristin Meyer, Morgan Doane, Denise Robinson
March 16, 2012, 10:45-12
Find all the very informative and useful handouts from this presentation at: http://www.kdl.org/kids/go/PLA2012
Subscribe to the library’s early literacy monthly newsletter at the above site or http://www.kdl.org/kids.
Libraries need to educate the public on what purposeful play is. Any library can create an early literacy play zone. These play areas support the practices of Every Child Ready to Read. Libraries have created these spaces in a variety of ways, depending on the space available.
The handouts provide samples of a community needs assessment:
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath, Random House, New York, 2007 was the source the library system used to create buy in for the project of creating these play spaces systemwide.
The spaces were tested at four pilot branches.
Success depends not only on community buy in, but also on the enthusiastic support of all staff, including pages. Staff needs to have training and understand the early literacy educational benefit of the play spaces, ‘play with purpose’.
Create a floor plan with rotating activities. Change the activities on a regular basis. Each space is dedicated to an early literacy activity. In a small space libraries can still have dedicated activity areas. They may have fewer activities, but still have very directed activities for children and parents.
Suggested play areas include; a puppet stage, dress up area, kitchen play set, doll house, blocks in a variety of sizes, train table, felt boards and magnet boards—stand alone or on a wall, Legos, writing centers, art carts, cubby activities, puzzles, cozy places to read, singing area with posted lyrics, measuring activities and others.
Cubby activities are cubicles that contain toys related to the monthly theme. For example various dinosaurs might be in the cubicle when dinosaurs are the theme.
A writing center can be a table with paper, crayons, and pencils. Add a mailbox and children can write letters to the librarian or, even better, to the library mascot, which may be a favorite stuffed animal or puppet.
Felt and magnet boards can provide a variety of activities from displaying farm animals to match first letters to an object or animal to matching rhyming sounds or words. They can be used for other letter or number and counting activities also.
Put mirrors on the bottom part of the Circulation Desk with a suggested emotion. Children can be busy with that activity while parents check-out.
Put song lyrics in the bathroom above the changing table to encourage parents to sing to their children.
Always label each activity with a brief suggestion for what the parent can do and also the skill and practice it helps the child learn.
Provide a ‘sanitation bin’ for parent to deposit toys that need to be cleaned.
These can be tabletop if that is the space available. Use endcaps, too. Change the focused activity in each area on a regular basis. For example, dinosaurs might be a ‘theme’ one month and so the play things, suggestions, and displayed books would reflect that theme.
Tips & tricks:
Ø Keep kits of activities that you can give to children sitting next to their parent who is using the computer.
Ø Label all materials with a sharpie. Some things leave unintentionally.
Ø In a small space use baskets to contain the activities.
Ø Open up the Children’s Program Room and use it for the play spaces when there are no programs.
See a walk-through of these kinds of spaces on U-Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OgjOW_o4Ig&feature=relmfu (smallest branch—2,000 square feet and they have directed play spaces!)
Sanitization of the play areas and materials is part of the closing process and takes very little time. The state of Michigan
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