Holiday Music

This holiday season brings many opportunities to enjoy live music with the family, for free! In addition to being fun, music also helps your child build literacy skills such as phonological awareness, rhythm, attention and memory.

Celebrate the Holidays with the San Antonio Lighthouse for the Blind Choir:

Monday, December 19, 11am, Memorial Library

San Antonio Youth Wind Ensembles SAPL Holiday Tour:
Monday, December 19, 3pm, Landa Library
Tuesday, December 20, 2pm, Central Library

An Evening with Holiday Ukulele Music:
Tuesday, December 20, 6:30pm, Central Library

Sing through the winter

Winter in San Antonio: the temperature climbs and plummets much like a very lively melody. Little Read Wagon is planning to do lots of singing at Play & Learn this winter. Singing together is a great way to have fun together and build phonological awareness by drawing attention to similar sounds in language. This week we will introduce some new songs with words like coat, boots, and scarf. We will also be reading books about getting dressed!

Please join us on Tuesday at 9:30am at the South San Community Center or Friday at 10:00am at the Claude W. Black Community Center.

In Balance

This past Saturday Little Read Wagon staff participated in one of KLRN's many community events. As part of the festivities, children had the opportunity to decorate their own balancing butterfly. This was one of our most enjoyable activities for a number of reasons:

1. Both children and adults were fascinated by the way the butterfly balanced on the tip of a finger. This fascination, the joy of discovery, the sense of "wow, I really didn't think it would work, but it does!" made the hours spent at the die cut machine and hot-gluing pennies to the undersides of the cut-outs worthwhile. But there's more!
2. While the cut-out was perched on a fingertip there was an opportunity to introduce vocabulary such as: balance, center of gravity, symmetry, weight, lighter, heavier... The name of our activity also just happened to have an alliterative quality, so we made sure to point out the sounds at the beginning of balancing and butterfly.
3. When there was finally room at the table (the crowd was so big we brought an extra table from our van to provide more space for decorating the butterflies), children had an opportunity to express themselves through the colors they chose, the patterns they designed, how fast or slow and meticulously they went about their embellishment. A simple collection of markers, crayons and a plain white butterfly cut-out generated an astounding variety of finished products.

4. The children also had a chance to indulge their scientific curiosity as they experimented with the balance scale. Some were satisfied with a quick demonstration while others expanded the range of possibilities by adding crayons, markers, and other objects to the scale.

Would you like to make your own balancing butterfly? Instructions for many variations can be found on the Internet. The key points are to use card stock or lightweight cardboard (like from a cereal box) to make a symmetrical shape with wings that extend forward of head of the butterfly (or bird, or other symmetrical creature), and attach weights such as coins or metal washers to the front tips of the wings. A toothpick taped to the underside of the cut-out helped us support the body of the butterfly.

Finally, the library has many books about butterflies, symmetry and equilibrium. Surely there are a few that you and your child would enjoy! You can find them by visiting mysapl.org.

Do you hear what I hear?

This week at Play & Learn we are all about sounds: making lots of noise and listening to what is going on around us. Phonological awareness is one of the pre-reading skills children develop from birth. We are preparing our children to eventually decode written words when we sing, bang on pots and pans, play with the sounds of language, and draw attention to all the noises in our environment. Does that sound like a lot of fun? We hope it is!

Last Chance: Phonological Awareness

Little Read Wagon will host it's last phonological awareness workshop on Saturday, November 14 at the Central Library. Registration is now closed. Please check back in December for information about our January workshop topic and registration.
If you are registered for November 14, please read/print/share this flyer for more important details.

October workshop is full!

Don't despair! There's one more opportunity to attend Little Read Wagon's phonological awareness workshop. Check back in a couple weeks for the announcement about the November teacher training. We are currently planning our 2010 early literacy workshops. We will post announcements about those in December.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fortinbras/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

September teacher workshop is full!

Don't despair! If you did not call in time to get into our September teacher workshop, you have two more chances in 2009. Our next teacher workshop will be October 10 at the McCreless library.

Please call on Monday, September 28 to register for this workshop. More details will be posted soon.

Early Literacy Workshop

It's back to school time and Little Read Wagon is continuing to offer workshops for early childhood professionals (those who work with children ages 5 and younger). Our next teacher training will be Saturday, September 26 at the Central Library. Please carefully read the flyer for more details and registration information. We hope to see you there!

For current teacher workshop details, please visit our Professional Development for Child Care Providers page.

Teachers, you are invited to Explore Early Literacy!

• Do you work in a child care facility?


• Do you have a listed, registered or licensed child care home?


• Have you made a career of working with children 5 years of age or younger?

If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, and you have not been to a Little Read Wagon workshop in 2009, then we would love to see you at our August workshop! Please carefully review this flier for workshop details.

Our next early literacy training for child care providers is Saturday, 15 August, 9:15 am – 3:15 p.m. at the Central Library. Registration opens on Monday, August 3.

Please call 207-2517 and leave a message with your name, workplace, the ages and number of children in your care, and a phone number. Each participant must register individually. We will return your call to confirm your registration.

Early Literacy Workshop for Teachers

The San Antonio Public Library's Little Read Wagon early literacy trainings (for those who work with children five and younger) are fun and FREE! Please print and share the attached flyer with all early childhood caregivers/teachers. This flyer gives the details for our next child care provider training, which will be held on Saturday, July 25th.

We look forward to hearing from you. Please don't hesitate to call if you have questions.

June Teacher Workshop

Early childhood professionals, please come sing, create, learn and have fun with us!

Registration for the June 20 teacher workshop opens on Monday, June 8, 2009. Please carefully review the workshop flyer before registering. Individuals may call 210-207-2517 on Monday, June 8 and leave a message with your name, work location, age of the children you work with, number of children, and a phone number we can use to confirm your registration.

Do you feel like singing?

On Saturday, March 28, we had a fantastic teacher workshop. A fun part of the day was when the teachers shared songs they like to use in their classrooms. Here is a sample of the phonological awareness-building tunes. Check the link list on the right periodically for more songs after each teacher workshop.

Fingerplay podcasts

Fingerplays can be so much fun, and they help develop motor, social, language, pre-reading and cognitive skills. Often it helps to hear someone else do a fingerplay or rhyme. Sometimes (OK, often) we need to hear it more than once. For those reasons you might check out Babette Reeves' podcasts. Babette sings or says the rhyme, then goes back and explains the accompanying motions.

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March Teacher Workshop

Registration for the March teacher's workshop is Monday, March 16. A printable flyer is available here.

Please call and leave a message with your full name, work location, age of children in your class, and a phone number. We will return your call to confirm registration.

Remember, if you register but do not attend the workshop AND do not inform Little Read Wagon of your change in plans, you will have to wait 12 months before registering again!

Quotes from Evaluations

Participants in last Saturday's workshop were asked to write down one thing that they had learned. Here are some of the things they had to say:

"Today I learned the importance of reading and what I can do to get my children ready to read...I also learned about the importance of singing songs/rhyming and storytelling."

"I learned how to search on the library computer because I'm not familiar with it. Also, I learned new songs that I will be using with the children...Also the importance of referrals with ECI. Thank you."

"Today I learned how much information the library has to offer, because I did not know that this was here for the taking. Thank you."

"Today I learned that talking, singing, fingerplaying help a lot for reading skills. Now I can spend more time helping my two children... he can look at the pictures and ... my baby can look at the bright colors and feel the different textures."

"Good information on Early Childhood Intervention. Helpful info. on on-line resources."

"Exploring the library website is extensive. There is a lot of info. I had no idea!"

"I learned that there is a wealth of information on line for library needs, and you can find and reserve books, videos, etc. using the computer (if you have a library card!)."

First Teacher Workshop of 2009 is Done!

The Little Read Wagon has completed it's first teacher workshop of the new year! This year Little Read Wagon is focusing on phonological awareness, or the ability to hear and play with the smaller sounds in words. The January 24 workshop was held at the beautiful Igo Branch Library. In addition to the early childhood professionals, special guests were Adam Spana (SAPL Digital Services), Rose Obregon (Brighton School), Molly McCormick (Easter Seals) and Ramona Lucius (SAPL Office of Outreach).

Participants enjoyed presentations and created a variety of items to use in the classroom. Jingle bracelets, sand blocks, rhythm sticks, song books, and felt puppies were created, embellished and taken away. Each participant also received a certificate for 5 clock hours and a bag of children's books.

Registration for the next workshop opens on Monday, February 9, 2009. Remember to call early and leave a detailed message including your name, center/school name and a phone number. Your call will be returned to confirm your registration.

February Teacher Workshop

This year in our free early literacy workshops (for those who work with children five and younger), we will explore phonological awareness, Early Childhood Intervention and library resources.

Registration for the February teacher's workshop opens on Monday, February 9. A printable flyer is available here.

January teacher workshop

This workshop is full. Please check back for information about February's workshop.