Our First Steps courses are designed to help parents learn about their children’s development with courses focusing on supporting children’s learning and their social and emotional needs.
At Hinckley Library today, I delivered the last session of a 5 week course, Storytime Fun. We run this course across the county in partnership with the Library Service and Booktrust, which is a children’s reading charity promoting children reading from an early age. This partnership enables libraries to meet their aims to increase child literacy by reading for pleasure. Family Learning aim to increase parents’ confidence in sharing books with their children and improve parents’ literacy skills and their mental health.
Each week, we share a different book provided by Booktrust. We read the book aloud, sing songs, play games and make crafts which relate to the story. We encourage parents and grandparents to join in all the activities. We discuss the importance of sharing books and how this can help children develop communication and speaking and listening skills.
In today’s session, we reflected on books they had shared with their children since the last session. Parents completed their diary entries in their individual learning plans. Once the diaries were written, we discussed the benefits of reading aloud to children and how important it is for developing their communication and literacy skills.
We all sang our ‘hello’ song to the babies and toddlers and sang nursery rhymes with lots of actions. I read this week’s story book ‘The Hungry Snake’. I had my large version of the book, and the parents had copies, provided by Booktrust, so they could look closely at the pictures with their children. I used a basket of props relating to the story, giving a toy to each family so they could hold it up when their animal appeared in the pictures.
Next it was craft time, and we made paper plate snakes. We choose simple crafts: using materials which families may already have and are inexpensive to make. We then sang songs about animals followed by games with the parachute. We ended the session with parents deciding what they will try at home. The children were given stickers to put in their Booktrust diaries and then we sang the goodbye song.
Parents commented on how valuable they have found the sessions as it has helped them feel less isolated and they have made friends with the other families and who they meet in town for coffee. All the families have now signed up for a follow-on Family Learning course called ‘Song in a Sack’.
Our adult learning programme is a great way for people to improve their skills in areas such as digital skills. You can browse courses on the GoLearn website.