All posts by Children's Staff

About Children's Staff

This post was written by the staff of the Children's Room. Contact Nicole Giroux, Head of Children's for more information.

Talking with very young children

Kids, Tips

TalkingVocabulary is built when talking directly to a child.  Once a child begins to talk, give her or him an opportunity to talk to you.

Research shows that conversations that deepen a topic are very beneficial to children just learning how to talk (Developing narrative structure, edited by A. McCabe and C. Peterson.  1991)
David Dickinson, describes this effort to deepen a conversation as “Strive for 5”.

Speak and then wait for up to 5 seconds for the child to respond – and then the adult speaks again.  Can you keep the dialogue alive for 5 turns?

Adult –> Child –> Adult –> Child –> Adult

I don’t model this well in storytime.  I may ask children questions, but I will not wait patiently for an answer.  Please, trust what the researchers say – not what you see me do in front of a group at storytime.

~Maureen

March Madness Tournament for Picture Books

Kids, Stories, Tips

My last post highlighted some favorite Easy Reader books.  I encouraged adults to rediscover them and to share some of their favorites with their children.

March Madness Easy ReadersThen we thought it would be a fun idea to have a tournament where we would pit some easy reader books against each other.

We have 8 books this week, and we will reduce it to the Final 4 on Tuesday, March 31.

Please help us select the winners.  Paper ballots are in the children’s room.  You can also vote online on the children’s page of the library’s website.      ~Maureen

These are the 8 books in contention this week:

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