Tuesday July 26th

Tuesdays are my late days, so I came in at 12:45 and went right up to the childrens' desk until 2:00.

Once I was back in my office, the other youth specialists and I went to work on what became a difficult word problem. We need to feature the Building Block Award nominees in story times during the months of October and November. One of these weeks is out because it is our annual Halloween Party. OK, so there are 10 books, 6 story times we need to fit them into and 4 of us and there is a set rotation. One of the ladies will be gone on maternity leave for the last 3, so she will only do one during the first 3 weeks. I made an ass of myself trying to figure this out, but thankfully, we all got through it and I chose 4 books to read at 2 different story times. Whew!

I also had a brief meeting with my boss about doing outreach with preschools for story time and presenting Every Child Ready to Read workshops for teachers and parents. We're going to start sending out letters to schools telling them about the resources and to contact us to set something up. We also discussed outreach with an elementary school in the Normandy District. If the grant goes through, I'll be going to the same school at the same time and day every month doing a story time for Kindergarteners! I love outreach visits; I just feel like a rockstar going into the school and being recognized as the lady who reads books and sings. Then, if those same kids come into my library, they get very excited to see me. One of the things I miss about teaching preschool is the personal connection with the students, so outreach is a good way to get a little of that. I'm meeting with them all the time, so I get to know some of their names and personalities. It's like that at my branch too, when I do story time and visit with the regulars.

I got my materials ready for evening story time; my theme was frogs and toads. The evening story time is much more casual than the mornings. It's just out in the childrens' area and we all sit on the carpet. We read a few frog books, played a frog counting game, sang five green and speckled frogs and made finger puppets of the five frogs to take home. I had a great turnout of 14 children and 9 adults. Woo-hoo!

Then, I was at the childrens' desk until we closed at 9:00. I'm always tired by that time, but somehow, as soon as I get home, I'm wide awake.