11/19/14 Casa Latina Workshop Xochitl

Jen, Tess, and I provided childcare and led the early literacy aspect of the workshop on 11/19/14. Most of the kids that came were very little. One child was 6 months, one 9 months, and one about 18 or so months. The 6 month old came with her mom who also stayed with us and the 9 month old was there with her older sister who is around 9 years old. When Jen and I had planned our story time and craft time we planned for an audience of pre-school age and up, and going in we knew that we were going to be flexible since we had no idea of what age range to expect. It was fun and really great experience planning it since I want to be a children's librarian. 

The evening of the storytime we adapted our plan, since we knew what age the children were. We started out with singing "If You're Happy and You Know It" as our new hello song because it was more familiar to the participants. Jen then read the first book we had planned and sang the "I Am Hungry" song. The 18 month old came in around that time and started crying since his mom had just left. Jen put him on her lap and I started singing some baby bounce songs that I knew from my directed fieldwork at SPL. I'm so glad I was able to pull those out because the babies loved them! The mom had her baby on her lap, and the 9-year-old had her younger sister on her lap and Jen with the little boy. Tess and I used stuffed animals as our "babies." I then read the other book we had on our plan and we had brought other books that we pulled out too. We started snack time around 5:30 and then started crafts and free play. We gave the little boy a turkey coloring sheet and the 9-year-old started painting a puppet from the craft box that Ivette had brought. We had planned for origami balloons or hand turkeys but since it was only one child who could really benefit from the crafts we let her pick what she wanted to do and she chose to paint and make a paper bag puppet. 

The little boy had a lot of energy and we were running around with him as well as entertaining the babies and carrying them. It was actually relaxing to babysit and so different from what I normally do and I really enjoyed being able to watch the kids and do a storytime with them. We definitely just went with the flow and everyone seemed to have a fun time.

For the December 10 workshop we will plan for a much younger age storytime. We also will of course be ready to adapt the plan.