Sunshine, Stories, and Artful Play for Our Youngest Friends
What is Sunshine & Stories? Sunshine & Stories is a Colorado State Library podcast dedicated to all things summer in public libraries. During our 2024-25 season, …
early literacy
Reimagining School Readiness Kits
About CSL Kits The State Library kits collection is our “library of things” for Colorado libraries. While it is fairly common for public libraries to …
Program Spotlight: Play, Learn, & Grow Family Night at Alamosa Library
We’ve asked libraries across Colorado to submit program they’ve run in the last year that they’re proud of and they want the rest of us …
Will We See You at the 2024 CATS Workshop?
CATS is coming to Colorado Springs. . . . The 2024 Children and Teen Services (CATS) Annual Workshop will take place on Monday, March 11th …
2022 Fall Collaborative Summer Learning Program Workshops: Resources
In fall 2022, Colorado State Library and Growing Readers Together held four in-person workshops and one online workshop to support programming, outreach, and services for …
New StoryWalk Resources
A StoryWalk® is a fun activity that places laminated pages from a picture book mounted on posts along an outside path, in store windows, around …
5 Early Literacy Practices for Babies
For: Caregivers/Parents Ages: Birth-2 Years The love of books and reading starts when we are born. As care providers, parents, and teachers, we need to …
Summer Reading 2018: Libraries Rock! The Importance of Music in Early Child Development
The 2018 Summer Reading theme is “Libraries Rock!” This theme gives us plenty of opportunities to create full brain activities through teachable moments. Music is …
Creating Full Brain Activities
You’ve probably heard that our brains have a left and a right side. The left side of the brain is the one responsible for organizing …
Let’s Grow Readers this Summer!
The best thing about summer reading is the weather. The longer and sunnier days make this the warmest season of the year. As a child, …
Parents are a Child’s First and Most Important Teacher
This blog post originally appeared on CO4Kids.org The early years — from a child’s birth to age eight — are critically important for all areas …
The 5 Early Literacy Practices: Talk
“This post is one in a series about the five literacy practices of sing, play, read, talk, and write.” What is talk? For this post, …
Getting Ready for Kindergarten With My Library : Language Development
Getting Ready for Kindergarten using the “Colorado Day by Day Family Literacy Calendar“ And our Libraries Part 2: Language Development When we look for …
Reading Aloud at Home: Connecting books with Early Literacy Activities
We talk so much about the five early literacy practices: Read, Talk, Write, Sing and Play, and their importance to your child’s brain development in …
The 5 early Literacy Practices: PLAY
“This post is one in a series about the five literacy practices of sing, play, read, talk, and write.” Play has been called “the work …
To be Bilingual; Benefits of knowing two languages
In this country where I’m living now, or to be more specific, the state where I am now living, Colorado, I have developed a new …
Getting Ready for Kindergarten with My Library (Part 1)
Getting Ready for Kinder using the “Colorado Day by Day Family Literacy Calendar” And our Libraries Part 1: Social Emotional Development …
The 5 Early Literacy Practices: Sing
“Gallina=chicken, puerta=door, ventana=window y pluma=pen” Those are words of a traditional rhyme back in my country. Even though I didn’t know English when I learned …
“The Library” or La Biblioteca (English version)
For those who don’t know me, my name is Pamela Mejia. I was born and lived all my life in the Dominican Republic until 2016, …
“The Library” or La Biblioteca (Spanish version)
Para aquellos que no me conocen, mi nombre es Pamela Mejia, nací y viví toda mi vida hasta los 27 años en la Republica Dominicana. …