Storytime on the Road!

This post by Manitowoc (WI) Public Library Youth Librarian and YSS Board Member Susie Menk encourages people to hit the road for storyimes!

Image by sweeethearts82 from Pixabay

How are your schools and community doing? Are the children attending school in person or online? Are you tired yet of doing storytimes to a camera with little audience interaction? Why not get out into your community? Take your storytime on the road!

Manitowoc Public Library is experimenting with new ways of doing our storytime. We recently did a “Storytime on the Sub”.  Manitowoc is home to the Wisconsin Maritime Museum which boasts a World War II submarine, the USS COBIA. We partnered with the museum to offer a registered, in-person storytime and then did a livestream of it as well. Happily enough, we had several families come in-person, but we blew our online attendance out of the water!! (Pun intended!) We had over 200 views of the sub storytime on our Facebook page.

The last week of September we partnered with another local business, Whispering Orchards. This apple farm was thrilled to let us do a live storytime and record a tour of the apple orchard as if we were taking a field trip. We shared this recorded field trip on our Facebook and YouTube pages for teachers and families alike. The apple orchard owner took us through the store and talked about the importance of honeybees to apple orchards then, walked us through the orchards and demonstrated how apples are picked and how the trees are grown. Then we watched apples being washed and sorted and finished the trip back in the store. It was a great field trip and now those teachers and families who are not able to get out and about due to the pandemic, can share the experience.

Our next stop is going to be a pumpkin farm. We are putting feelers out to other places and businesses to see who else will work with us. We talked to some elementary grade teachers to find out what places they usually go to for field trips and are using that as a basis for making connections. We hope to do a fire station, police station, and maybe even a grocery store!

So?! What are you waiting for? Who can you find in your community that might be willing to let you do an outside storytime or a storytime on the road? Talk to your teachers and parents and families and find out what would interest them. Then go ahead and make some phone calls. You will be spreading goodwill in your community and providing a much needed service to teachers and families. It’s a win-win for everyone!

Virtual & Offline Programming YSS blog COVID-19 series:

• Innovative Solutions for Connecting with Kids During COVID 10/25/21
• Virtual Teen Escape Room Book Club  10/22/21
• Making Digital Escape Rooms   11/23/20
• How to be a Better Video Presenter  11/2/20
• Storytime on the Road!   10/15/20
• How to Do Halloween During COVID-19  9/28/20
• Recharging Your “To-Go” Services  9/9/20
• Youth Services Program Palooza webinar 6/8/20
• Digital Escape Rooms – the Holy Grail  5/26/20
• Virtual and Offline Programs for Summer and Beyond  5/6/20 (combines & updates 6 previous resource post)
• “Grab-&-Go” Activity Kit Ideas  5/5/20
• Offline and Feeling Fine: Ideas for Programming Unvirtually  4/29/20
• Beyond E-Storytimes: Virtual Services and Programs for Youth 4/22/20
• Using Premier for Virtual Programming on Facebook 3/24/20