Youth Services

Regardless of whether today’s kids will learn to print, write cursive, or type on a keyboard or screen – they’ll need to have strong fine motor skills. There are so many fun ways to build your child’s hand strength and coordination! At the library, we use Busy Boxes after storytimes with preschool-aged children; you can recreate these activities at home. Some of our boxes include:

Lacing Cards

All summer we’ve been retelling Folk and Fairy Tales in our storytimes.* We also have a whole collection of Folk Tales in our picture book area, with retellings of folk and fairy tales from around the world – from the most popular to the most obscure. In fact, they’re being moved to a more prominent location, so when you are able to come visit us in Youth Services again, they’ll be easy to find!

Reading and vocabulary go hand in hand – one can improve the other, and vice versa. How fortunate that reading and talking to your baby is so easy! Little ones learn words at an amazing rate. The more words he learns now, the more he will be able to express and understand (spoken and written) later in life. 

A few months ago, we featured these Build-A-Story cards from Barefoot Books. They’re a fun way to Imagine Your Story - write or tell a story of your own! This time, we’ve got more cards with new characters, settings, and ideas for you to use.

Nursery rhymes are perfect little songs for encouraging language development. Although they aren’t always sung, nursery rhymes do have a rhythmic lilt, encouraging that sing-song cadence that helps ingrain things into little brains. They are short, sweet, and easy to remember, and, as their name suggests, the words usually rhyme.