Children's Services

Working with the Children's Services Department at the Santa Fe Springs City Library was one of the most personally rewarding experiences of my career. Duties included leading educational tours of a local park, leading the Preschool Story Time team, cultivating displays for various programs, and assisting in running our Stay & Play grant.

Seeing the children grow in their understanding as well as their literacy skills was an amazing experience, and having a platform for representation of every patron—even at the youngest age—is something I plan to take with me throughout my librarianship career.

Here are some examples of my work:

Preschool Story Time

Set up for Preschool Story Time included 30 crafts and different soft toys in play stations for the youngest patrons

For one of the winter session themes, we celebrated Filipino heritage by creating parole ornaments from paper plates and reading stories about the culture

As part of the Preschool Story Time Team, one of my main duties was to collaborate with teammates to select themes, prepare crafts that coincided with the theme, and lead the story time session. Our story time consisted of: free play, simple nursery rhymes sung between three different book readings, and movement moments for baby yoga and dance.

This program was one of the most popular in the library, bringing in a consistent number of 50+ patrons weekly.

Book Displays

I was often asked to create book displays for various programs. Our regular children's displays would usually be on theme with Preschool Story Time or Bilingual Story Time.

Special displays were often created for programs. The image to the right shows a display I made for the STEAM program, where the library had an inflatable planetarium in the children's section. Books selected for this display consisted of both children and adult items in the sci-fi, non-fiction, and biography genres. I also included other items to promote the Library of Things catalog with telescopes, solar binoculars, and CA state parks passes.

Stay & Play

Flyers that were displayed and distributed for patrons

Stay & Play was a grant based program that I assisted in introducing. This program was meant to introduce non-parental caregivers to a network of resources available to them in the community. This included making connections with local preschools and Headstart programs, the Santa Fe Springs Family and Human Services, and other community based resource centers. The program also included guided free play for the children, to encourage caregivers to connect with each other and through early literacy skills.

Preparing for this program included budgeting for supplies, weekly set up, literacy training sessions, and collaborating with the Children's Librarian to create a safe and engaging environment for the children and caregivers.

The Stay & Play Team

Preparing for this program included budgeting for supplies, weekly set up, literacy training sessions, and collaborating with the Children's Librarian to create a safe and engaging environment for the children and caregivers.

This program would often bring in about 60+ patrons, showcasing a need for these types of resources within the community.

Take Home Kits created by the team. These consisted of different items to encourage the 5 keys to early literacy: song, play, writing, talk, and reading