Speakers

Mrs Paula Willey
Librarian, Baltimore County Public Library, Baltimore, Maryland

Biography

Paula Willey is a librarian and children's book critic in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. She has written extensively on engaging children with books and on creating a home environment that supports and encourages literacy and numeracy skills. Her book reviews can be read in Booklist, School Library Journal, the Baltimore Sun newspaper, and online at unadulterated.us.

pwbalto@gmail.com

Presentation Abstract

We All Learn Together: Getting Families Involved in Informal Learning

Many libraries have adopted structured story-times that focus on age-appropriate developmental skills for babies and children. Equally important, however, is the library’s role in parent and caregiver development. Story-times use music, movement, and story to promote language, motor skills, cognition, and social skills. When librarians use this same time to explain to the grown-ups which developmental areas are exercised during each activity, parents and caregivers can then re-create the same rich, play-based bonding experience that we provide in the library.

Librarians can also teach parents and caregivers of school-age children how to create a supportive educational environment. It is ideal to run concurrent programs for children and parents, while we engage the kids in activities that reinforce and extend existing skills; we take the opportunity to talk to the adults separately. Librarians show how to emphasize and explain the everyday use of math and language skills at home, and how to turn games, shopping and leisure activities into learning experiences. The point is not to bring the labor of learning into the home, but to show how literacy and numeracy skills are natural—and even pleasurable—aspects of everyday life.