How to start loving the library

I don’t know about you but for years I saw my library as a place where I had to constantly shhhh my children and follow them around picking up books behind them. Two years ago when Ava started kindergarten my eyes were opened to how fast education is now fed to our youth. You either get on the ball early or you risk your child being behind for lifetime. As a child that struggled with reading and spelling, and still sometimes does, I knew this was something I did not want for my children. I made it my summer mission that year to love our library and form good reading habits. In this post I want to share how the Wolfe pack and I learned to love our library as a family and how our visits look now. 

The quiet zone. Every mother’s worst nightmare. Right? Well about a week before we started our weekly visits I introduced our library voice. I explained to them that reading is a quite sport where we use soft voices so our brains can focus. After the indroduction we would practice. I would, and sometimes still do, shout “library voice” and we practice whispering for 10-15 minutes. There is no reward or punishment, the science of practice makes perfect makes sense here. And mom has to be patient. We did this a lot during bedtime or meals. Once they seemed to have it down we where good to go, for us it took about a dozen times for them to master. 

How long are we there? I have a hard time getting my cubs to understand and concept time, which I think is normal. So before we went into the library I always say how long we have to visit today, “We will be spending an hour today here, after that we have to leave.” This helps me break down how much time we have to do all the things the kids enjoy. Our library has touch screen computers for kids, color sheets, a train table, toys and legos, puzzles, an eye spy game, oh and books! So many options. If I notice my child favoring one activity that day I use our time limit to remind them if they stay on the computer to long they will have no time to pick out books for the week. This usually helps them finish that activity and head to the next. I normal do not allow more than 20 minutes on one activity or the point of being at the library to learn becomes irrelavent. 

Books, books, everywhere! The best way to form a habit is to start from the beginning with a plan. All year long, with some exceptions, we visit the library once a week. That means you may take one book a day home, that’s our rule. This helps me to keep track of them all! To many would be confusing and you risk loosing books. For Ava,7, she is allowed 5 leveled readers in her level for each day of the school week, then 2 books she can have read to her or for her to read to Ali. For Ali,2, she can pick 5 books she thinks she will like and I pick two education books out. Then once a month I allow both girls to pick out a movie. Little bit of fun little bit of learning. I found out the hard way that when I let the girls go hog wild on checking out books, we were not really reading them and again it makes the reason we are there irrelevant. 

Check out the children’s desk fliers. During the summer you should definitely sign your cubs up for the reading program. They have the chance to win prizes for reading and get rewards each week. This is how we started our weekly visits and I will admit that it helped and encouraged us to visit. During the school year the desk in the children’s department has a varying amount of coupons and restaurant programs for kids. We use these to encourage tracking how many books they read. Who doesn’t love free pizza? 

The computers. Ah, sometimes I hate these things! But of course the cubs love having computer time. I use this time to look up any books I want to get or topics for the cubs. At our library I can sit across for them while I search and they play.  We limit this to games where they are learning  and to 20 minutes. 

Like almost everything in life, you are the key to your child’s success. I had to talk myself into the commitment of everyday reading, but I even found myself reading a lot more now a days! I have seen growth in my cubs’s love to read and that proves to myself, that what I am doing works. I hope you can make a commit to your cubs and yourself and learn to love your library again! 

Until next time, keep reading!

xoxo