This week is National Libraries Week!

In the nursery and pre-school, we are big advocates for reading and sharing these experiences together. We have a large focus on early literacy skills as part of our everyday provision, providing a variety of books and opportunities to read in every type of play, and offer our own Lending Library for families to borrow books to take home and read together! Literacy is also a large focus on our new school-readiness programme – Rising Star – for pre-schoolers. Information will be shared with parents in due course and it is anticipated to be rolled out after the October half term.

A key way in which we encourage literacy and early reading is through engaging with children’s interests and making story time fun! Our practitioners are well practised at reading stories with plenty of verbal play and active participation. They also often use story sacks to encourage children to be more involved. These can even be made and are a wonderful way of working together to make something special based on a favourite story, whilst giving many opportunities for early learning, such as stimulating language development and making mark-making fun. Some of our favourites are The Three Little Pigs, Freddie and the Fairy and The Very Hungry Caterpillar!

Many of our local libraries offer clubs and activities such as Baby Rhyme Time and Storytime Sessions that are ideal for introducing children to books and stories and for developing those creative imagination skills. If you haven’t already, why not sign up to your local library – get involved and get borrowing.

After all, as Barack Obama said:

“At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better.”