Contents
Newsgroup, eGroups, Mailing List
Storytimes for preschool children involve many activities, including books, songs, rhymes, flannelboards, puppets, and crafts. Variety in the program helps maintain the attention of the little ones who, by nature of their age, may be easily distracted. The storyteller, whether he/she is a librarian, teacher, daycare provider, or parent, needs a ready supply of activities to conduct successful programs.
The Internet offers a wealth of free storytime resources. The purpose of this pathfinder is to collect and organize the resources into a format that makes them easily accessible to all those people, both novice and well seasoned, who share stories with young children.
I have been conducting storytimes for public library and children’s preschool audiences, including Headstart and public school prekindergarten, for over five years. My approach is constantly developing and changing as I discover new ideas.
Not long ago, as a graduate student in the Palmer School of Library and Information Science at Long Island University, I was looking for information on digital libraries for children, I stumbled across some Internet sites that contained information useful for preparing storytimes. My initial findings came from sites which were listings of storytime resource links, or directories. From there, I began to conduct searches for additional sites using different singular Internet search tools, like AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Lycos, WebCrawler, Yahoo! and the meta Internet search tool, Metadog. Examples of search terms used include, storytime, storytime resources, fingerplays, flannelboards, and puppets. Some of the search tools offered additional terms, which were used to modify the search. AltaVista also offered related pages with its results.
Storytime newsgroups and discussion groups were searched for in Deja News and eGroups.
Some of the search results included sites designed for the preschool teacher or daycare provider. The resources these provide, are useful for storytime in addition to preschool and daycare, and therefore have been included in this collection of resources.
Many of the sites include more than one type of storytime resource. Note that some of the links and annotations in this pathfinder refer directly to pages within sites that contains specific information, rather than to the respective home pages. This approach is intended to facilitate access to individual resources.
There are a few sites which are strictly lists of links, or directories, for children's storytime resources. Many of the individual links on the directories are included in this pathfinder. However, links to the complete lists are offered here to give readers the opportunity to discover any "gems" of information I have missed. Accessing these sites every so often should also serve to update readers as new links are added.
Libraryland:
Children’s Services:Storytelling
Links to storytelling and puppetry resources are
offered. A recent update makes this a fairly current site.
Storytime
Resources and Ideas
Links are listed in categories entitled, Infant/Toddler
Times; Fingerplays, Songs, Rhymes; Themes; General Information; Storytime
Kits; and Holiday Resources. Printable patterns and pages are also accessible.
Richland
County Public Library: Toolbox
Links are arranged in the following categories:
Storytime, Music and Fingerplays, Crafts and Other Activities. Brief annotations
accompany about one half of the links.
Newsgroup, eGroups, Mailing List
As with other Internet pathfinders, this one is by no means exhaustive ot its topic. To further add to your collection of storytime resources, you may find the articles posted to the newsgroup, news:rec.arts.books.childrens, helpful. According to the frequently asked questions document, this is an unmoderated newsgroup open to discussion of all aspects of children's literature.
Another source of up-to-date ideas are two eGroups and a mailing list:
childlibrarian
Childlibrarian is for Children's librarians in public
libraries. The topics are anything that is of concern to anyone else in
this profession. To subscribe, go to the childlibrarian site, register
with eGroups and follow the directions.
storychild
Storychild is dedicated to storytelling for children
in all its forms. This list is for the exchange of information and discussion
of theory and ideas about storytimes for children, in public libraries,
schools, day cares, or wherever else such programs are shared with children.
To subscribe, go to the storychild site, register with eGroups and follow
the directions.
STORYTELL
This is a very active and interesting mailing list.
It reaches storytellers from around the world with lots of questions and
answers about storytelling. To subscribe, send email to STORYTELL-REQUEST@venus.twu.edu
with the message, SUBSCRIBE STORYTELL.
Click on any topic to access the resources of the many aspects of a storytime!
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Please send suggestions and comments to rabideau@advinc.com