Literacy Programs

Our libraries are only the first step in helping the children we serve gain the skills they need to be ready for school. Through our libraries, we start by providing access to books and a print rich environment, then we work to make sure the gift comes alive. Books for Kids runs programs in our libraries to engage the children and all of the adults in their lives in books and reading and to try to ensure that adults understand the importance of and are reading to them. Our goal is school readiness and literary success through the building of the skills in these children that are the key to literacy: phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge and understanding the concepts about print conventions.

Caregivers and Teachers: SchoolTime Program

We offer support and training to the caregivers and teachers using our libraries in the form of supplemental materials, new books, monthly tips, ideas and activities for working with the children and workshops to help provide new ideas to enhance early literacy skills.

We encourage the caregivers and teachers to read to the children, to do literacy based activities to make the books come alive and to enhance the library experience. We show them that through discussions of the story content and characters, open-ended questions about story events, vocabulary discussions and explanations of print features, they can promote a greater understanding of language, knowledge of story structure, reading and listening comprehension skills, and expanded vocabulary. Through these exercises, we are also promoting phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge and understanding the concepts about print conventions.

Families: FamilyTime Program

We offer support and training to the families of the children we serve through workshops, bi-lingual literacy materials and books. On a monthly basis, we provide materials for the libraries to send home to parents that discuss the importance of reading with their children. Our materials are offered in secondary languages so as to help and include those families that are not proficient in English.

We are launching workshops in the evening for parents to help educate them on the importance of books and reading to their children. Since most of the parents work one or more jobs during the day, the workshops are held in the early evening. To encourage attendance, we offer dinner for the families and childcare and activities in our libraries so that the parents are able to listen and focus on the message. We give away books for the parents through our BookTime program for their children and family to continue to love books and build skills.

Children: StoryTime Program

We have volunteers and individuals and ranging from community members, retired librarians, corporate volunteers, early childhood literacy experts who help us in various ways to work with the children in our libraries to make their experience even deeper and to the help give them the important tools need to be successful in life. From puppet shows, sing-a-longs, literacy-based arts and crafts and group readings, all our activities bring books to life, make learning fun and help build the critical early literacy skills our children need.

Through our BookTime program, we extend our StoryTime program to the homes of the children by giving them books to take home.

Children and Families: BookTime Program

We help children build their own home library by also giving them age appropriate books to take home. We partner with publishers’ books stores, corporate partners and other book donors to find new books which we can give to the children we serve.