Tips and resources to help parents, teachers, and librarians promote reading, reading skills, and learning at every stage of life.
The Colorado State Library has once again renewed their support for ReadingRecord summer reading tracking software! ReadingRecord is a web-based application for libraries to track reading program participants. It is a cloud (hosted) service, meaning that no additional equipment is required to use ReadingRecord. It can be used to track most any kind of reading […]
Grants are now available for teens and adults to attend the 31st Annual Colorado Teen Literature Conference on Saturday, April 13th, 2019, featuring keynote authors Sandhya Menon and Bill Konigsberg. This annual conference offers breakout sessions that have appeal for teens, educators, librarians, and anyone interested in teen literature. The conference will be held at the […]
Winter break is a great time to read with your kids! Learning doesn’t just happen at school; it happens at home, too. The Colorado Department of Education defines family literacy as the following: Family Literacy Integrates all the following activities: Parent or family adult education and literacy activities that lead to readiness for postsecondary education […]
One Book is back for its 8th year! The One Book Colorado program launched its 2019 book selection voting on December 1st. The name of the program has changed, but the mission is the same – to give away 75,000 copies of the same book, one to every four-year-old in the state. Pick up a free […]
This post was written by Beth Crist, Youth & Family Services Consultant. The 2018 Colorado Teen Video Challenge has been exciting! The Teen Video Challenge, a national competition sponsored by the Collaborative Summer Library Program (CSLP), encourages teens to create short public service announcements that promote reading and library use over the summer to other […]
For: Caregivers/Parents Ages: Birth-2 Years The love of books and reading starts when we are born. As care providers, parents, and teachers, we need to connect the experience of reading and learning with a ludic/game activity or experience. When you connect a learning or reading experience with a fun experience, your child will associate the […]
The 2018 Summer Reading theme is “Libraries Rock!” This theme gives us plenty of opportunities to create full brain activities through teachable moments. Music is considered a means of both expression and learning for children. As caregivers, parents, librarians, and teachers, we encounter young children that struggle with expressing their emotions and feelings through words. […]
You’ve probably heard that our brains have a left and a right side. The left side of the brain is the one responsible for organizing our thoughts and makes us think logically. The right side of our brain is the emotional half; we have it to thank for our feelings. What does this mean for […]
The best thing about summer reading is the weather. The longer and sunnier days make this the warmest season of the year. As a child, the most exciting part of the summer was getting to spend time with my family, friends, and neighbors. A very active and curious kid, my summers represented extra time to […]
This blog post originally appeared on CO4Kids.org The early years — from a child’s birth to age eight — are critically important for all areas of learning and development. That includes children’s health and physical development, emotional and behavioral development, as well as logic and reasoning. Early experiences and relationships shape how a child’s brain […]
“This post is one in a series about the five literacy practices of sing, play, read, talk, and write.” What is talk? For this post, the definition of talk will be: “The act of emitting sounds with the intention of communicating a specific desire, need or thought” Have you ever seen a baby babbling to […]
Getting Ready for Kindergarten using the “Colorado Day by Day Family Literacy Calendar“ And our Libraries Part 2: Language Development When we look for the definition of language in the dictionary, it tells us that language is the tool humans use for expressing thoughts, needs, desires, and also to communicate with others. The famous […]
We talk so much about the five early literacy practices: Read, Talk, Write, Sing and Play, and their importance to your child’s brain development in the areas of language, cognition, socio-emotional and fine-gross motor skills. But did you know that by reading aloud with your child, having a shared reading or participating in storytime at […]
“This post is one in a series about the five literacy practices of sing, play, read, talk, and write.” Play has been called “the work of children” and for good reason! It is through play that children learn to interact in their environment, discover their interests, and acquire speech, language, new vocabulary, and cognitive, motor, […]
In this country where I’m living now, or to be more specific, the state where I am now living, Colorado, I have developed a new hobby, thanks to my husband. I am talking about skiing! Even though I have only gone to ski two times, I already consider myself a “ski addict”. The second time […]
Getting Ready for Kinder using the “Colorado Day by Day Family Literacy Calendar” And our Libraries Part 1: Social Emotional Development Social development is a huge part of growing up, but what is Social Development? Social development involves learning the values, knowledge and skills that enable children to relate to others effectively. This kind […]
“Gallina=chicken, puerta=door, ventana=window y pluma=pen” Those are words of a traditional rhyme back in my country. Even though I didn’t know English when I learned that song, I was probably around 3 years old, I knew the letters of that song to perfection. Music is recognized as a universal feature of human cognition: every healthy […]
This summer, two statewide programs will combine forces to spread the joy of music and raise awareness of the importance of music education to communities across Colorado. Under the leadership of co-chairs Governor John Hickenlooper and Isaac Slade, lead singer of The Fray, Take Note Colorado (https://takenotecolorado.org/ ) is a statewide initiative to provide access […]
For those who don’t know me, my name is Pamela Mejia. I was born and lived all my life in the Dominican Republic until 2016, the year I got married to my husband from Colorado. We’ve been married 1 year and 7 months, the same amount of time I have lived in this state. Before […]
Para aquellos que no me conocen, mi nombre es Pamela Mejia, nací y viví toda mi vida hasta los 27 años en la Republica Dominicana. Año en que me case con mi actual esposo proveniente de Colorado. Llevamos 1 y 7 meses de casados, lo mismo que llevo viviendo en Colorado. Antes de vivir aquí, […]
Parents and caregivers are the first education providers during the 0-5 early critical years. Reading has been associated as an early indicator of academic success. Have you heard about: “The 1000 Books Before Kindergarten challenge”? It’s simple: read any book with your child, with the goal of reading 1,000 before kindergarten. The objectives of this […]