Not every family can come to storytime, and we can’t visit all the local daycares and preschools as often as we’d like. How could we get consistent literacy awareness to all these people? By sending storytime skills and ideas straight to them, wherever they were.

This program builds upon the strong literacy fundamentals found in our storytimes by empowering the caregivers to go beyond just reading a book. By demystifying literacy skills and expanding the adults' confidence and knowledge, we are able to bring elements of the library into kids' daily lives.

Our tips give adults practical activities to do with kids, and our videos help them be more intentional about making literacy part of their routines. The program, like our storytimes, is based on Upstart’s Very Ready Reading Program, emphasizing the importance of caregivers sharing one literacy skill (books, sounds, words, rhymes, songs, stories, play) each day to build routines and bond with their child. These concepts are straightforward, unintimidating, and easy to incorporate into daily activities. Best of all, this program allows our messages to reach deep into our community, meeting needs regardless of ability to visit library buildings.

Our goal is to make literacy accessible to everyone, and to provide positive and playful learning experiences for children and their caregivers. We have been thrilled to see families placing holds on books and CDs that we recommend or demonstrate in our videos, and coming in to ask questions and show off how they’ve taken our activities even farther. Many daycares and schools we visit have reported using the videos and texts to format storytimes and activities similar to what we present at the library and during our visits, providing the children with regularly scheduled fun literacy activities.