*The post below is from a blog I started with a couple of my coworkers! I figured I could share some things from there about my work here on my personal blog since it is part of me! I call myself “Butterfly” on the work blog for anonymity’s sake, and my coworkers also have code names too!

Well! It has been a while.

With my wedding that’s come and gone, Cricket being out of town (and will be out of town again come July), and summer reading being in full swing, we have been a busy bunch. But, I’ve been getting an itch to write in my personal blog, and I figure, I can scratch that itch at work too by writing on our library blog! I’m sure you missed us 💙

Since my last post, we’ve changed some stuff up with our baby and toddler programs because, quite frankly, we weren’t getting any babies. One parent (usually a mother) would come with her baby, and she’d be the only one. And because she was the only one, she wouldn’t come back the next week, but then guess what? Another different mother would come in with her baby that week, and she’d be the only one, and the cycle would continue.

It’s been sad to see our baby story time dwindle to such low numbers (aka no one), so after talking with Bee about it, we decided to switch from doing separate baby and toddler story times to a combined story time that covers all those ages up to five-years-old. Enter in: Family Story Time!

what is “family story time”?

I wrote out a Google doc describing in length what Family Story Time would look like, but I’ll just share the first paragraph here so you have an understanding of what our goal is:

“Description: A 45-minute story time that will focus on early literacy in preschool age kids (0-5). The first 10-15 minutes will be baby-focused (ages 0-18 months), encouraging grown ups and siblings to interact with their babies through songs, rhymes, and finger plays. Depending on the vibe of the group, either a book will be read by the librarian, or parents will have an opportunity to read a board book to their baby/children. Depending on the movement of the babies, some may be more inclined to the toddler portion of the story time rather than the baby portion, and that is more than okay!

The last 30 minutes will be geared towards toddlers (ages 18-36 months), in which there will be some songs, but more reading/activity focus (crafts, games, experiences, etc.). The purpose of this combination of baby bounce and toddler time is to allow grown ups with varying ages of children to be able to participate in story time together, rather than feel like they have to come to one story time or the other, or to neither story times at all because of the differing ages of the children they take care of.”

Now, this was the intention behind family story time, and it still is! Has this been happening successfully? Ehh, kind of? We still have more toddlers than babies arriving and participating. But when I think about it, the main reason we started doing this (the italicized portion of the second paragraph) is a success.

Parents have been bringing all of their kids of varying ages to participate in family story time, and they’re enjoying the content, even if we don’t necessarily do every single thing we planned. I at least desire for there to be some sort of activity, whether it’s a craft, song, dance, etc. and that part has been successful too!

Even with things being “weird” during the summer (meaning, we don’t see our regulars as often or more often, we see more new people using the library, we do our weekly programs PLUS another special weekly program for summer), it’s nice to see that the things we are doing to implement change at our branch are working!

Now that you know what family story time is, I’m excited to be able to share the things we’ve done for this particular program! If you’re also a librarian, you’re free to use these ideas as well, or if you’re not, maybe it’ll still inspire you in your own way, either with your own children or in your own personal life!

What is something in your life or in your work that just isn’t working? What are some ways you can adjust and refresh things to be able to see more success?

P.S. If you’d like to follow the work blog, head to www.shelfsagas.wordpress.com!