Lightsome Librarian: Toddler and Preschool Story Times

At my library we have two librarians. Currently I am the storytime librarian and my peer librarian is the school-age and teen librarian. We transitioned into these roles as of December 2018. We rotate roles every couple years but do occasionally 'cross-train' to work with each other's age groups.

Our library has nine storytimes a week. Thankfully the librarian does not present every single one of them but, instead, we have wonderful Library Assistant's that help present several mornings a week when the storytime librarian is not in the building. Of those nine story times, only two are Baby Storytimes. The rest of the story times are for Toddlers, Preschoolers, or for their whole family - Family Storytimes.

We also present a weekly school-age program (2 meetings each week) on a particular topic as well as several other weekly programs (legos, reading to dogs, etc.) for that age group.

When I first became the storytime librarian over 4 years ago it took a little adjusting but I found a formula for storytimes that works for me and my individual community. That way everything stays the same each week (static) except for the themed activities which I swapped out to match the weekly theme. Each session I decided if I wanted to move any of the items around as well as decide if I wanted a new static activity, such as opening song, movement song, transitions, etc., for the upcoming session.

This not only helps for repetition, but the children that regularly come to storytimes know what is coming next. Caregivers can also anticipate certain elements of storytimes, such as when we are about to take a wiggle break or when storytime is coming to an end by paying attention to certain cues. And, last but not least, it helps the presenter keep track of the audience and how much time is left in the storytime. The presenter can easily cut items out or add elements if they're familiar with the static storytime elements.

Bottom line, it means you get to have more fun losing yourself in the storytime and interacting with storytime regulars than having to keep your place on what's coming up next!