I'm a Little Teapot

I recently went on an internal course to learn how to present storytime programs at our library. Imagine a room full of adults singing "I'm a Little Teapot" and doing the actions together - tres amusant, n'est pas?

I've been to classes that are dull, but this one certainly didn't fall in that category. The instructors actually apologized for having to go over the mandatory boring guidelines part, before zipping through them in order to spend more time on getting us comfortable with reading out loud and presenting rhymes and songs.

I must confess, I had a distinct advantage over all the other students: I was the only parent in the class (other than the two instructors). Having kids of my own, I've had years of practise reading children's stories out loud in different funny voices and keeping the kids' attention by asking questions. (What kind of animal is that? You're right, that's a pig! What sound does a pig make? Let's all make a pig noise. Oink, oink, grunt, snort!) One person in the class admitted that she doesn't really like kids and is terrified of running a storytime program. I'm sure she'll be fine once she gets going, but she has a big mental hurdle to overcome first.

If all goes as planned, I'll be doing my own storytimes by the end of February. What fun!


January 11th update: It's official! I have a preschool storytime six-week program of my very own, starting at the end of February, and another immediately following in April. I have some work to do!