Every day during Open Time,the Orange Room becomes the Canterbury Community Nursery School Library, facilitated by Sara Hudson and Amy Stevens.  Here, children are invited to enjoy a wide range of language activities that center around the weekly theme.  They can listen to stories selected to coordinate with the theme.  During the telling of the story, the children learn about the mechanics of books – authors, illustrators, covers, how the words flow, what we can learn from the pictures.  They also get the chance to discuss the book, predict the next event, interpret the characters’ emotions, and wonder what the author wanted us to learn. 

Children also get the chance to enjoy “reading” books themselves, even if they are not yet readers.  They read the pictures, or retell stories they have heard before.  Stuffed animals and real friends make great companions for this activity.

At our Author Table, our budding writers have been busy writing books, postcards, and letters using a variety of materials.  There are fancy pens and markers, stickers, pictures from magazines, rubber stamps, rubbing plates, crayons, stencils – the selection changes from week to week. 

At the ABC Table, they can visit Bernard the Book Bear and learn the letter for that week.  There are games and manipulative materials there to support letter recognition and phonemic awareness – the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds. 

At the Game Table, there are literacy games.  Children can look for a letter in a Big Book using a special tool, such as a fly swatter with a window cut in it.  They can make letters out of modeling clay and play rhyming games.  And, on the floor there are big puzzles or felt board activities. 

All of these activities support early literacy skills such as visual discrimination, letter recognition, and letter-sound relationships.  But, most of all, they are engaging and fun.

We also have a circulating part of our library program.  Children are able to check out books, keep them for a week, and then return them to the library.  They each have a library card of their own that shows that they have this privilege.  We hope that by checking out books from the CCNS Library, they will develop the love of books that will serve them throughout their lives.

Come by any day during Open Time and see all the fun we have in the Library!

If you have a question, comment, book recommendation
or other suggestion for the library, please email Ms. Sara.