Holiday Week Hours

Amidst all the eating and relaxing of this Thanksgiving holiday, don't forget about the library!  While we will be closed for some of the holiday, there will still be time before and after Thanksgiving to come visit us!

The library will close early on Wednesday, November 21 at 5:00pm.  We will be closed all day on Thursday, November 22.

However, we'll still be open tomorrow from 9am to 5pm for you to stop by and grab books, movies, and whatever else you'll need for the holiday!  Perhaps you'll be traveling?  Audiobooks are a wonderful way to pass the time!  Stop in and pick up some fun audiobooks to share with the whole family!

Additionally, we WILL be OPEN on Friday, November 23!  We'll even be showing a Family Movie at 2:00pm!  So stop in and see us the day after Thanksgiving!

Baby Up and Baby Down

In today’s Nursery Rhyme Time, we shared an early literacy tip about tummy time and encouraging your child to sit up.

Did you know that different kinds of physical movement are incredibly beneficial to your baby? Tummy time helps develop back and neck muscles and visual tracking abilities. And sitting upright causes baby’s larynx to drop lower in the throat. That extra space allows baby to make a much wider variety of sounds, and is actually why humans can speak and animals can’t. So make sure baby spends time both horizontal and vertical!

You’ve probably heard of tummy time – making sure your baby spends plenty of wakeful hours on his or her tummy. When babies are young, this helps them develop their back and neck muscles. It can also decrease the likelihood of flat spots on baby’s head, a common problem for babies who spend too much time lying on their back or in reclining seats. It also allows baby to develop their visual tracking abilities, since they’re controlling their own head, and therefore eye, movements.

Healthy Children.org, a website sponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics, has a whole host of tips as to how to best utilize tummy time (and a bunch of other great parenting tips). Though some babies don’t seem to like tummy time, the benefits are worth sticking it out. Try introducing fun new toys while baby’s on his or her tummy, and make sure you provide lots of fun interaction.

Once babies can hold their own heads up, help them practice sitting up. Spending time in an upright position is essential in developing baby’s language skills because it allows baby’s larynx to drop. Humans have greater spoken language than animals precisely because our larynx is low in our throats. When babies are born, their larynxes are closer to their mouths, which protects them from choking and allows them to drink and breathe at the same time. As they grow older and spend more time upright, their larynx drops. The additional space between our larynxes and mouths allows us to make a wider variety of sounds, and that’s why we can talk and animals can’t.

So while your baby’s tiny, make sure to encourage lots of tummy time. As your baby gets older, encourage him or her to sit up. Once he or she has spent enough time upright, your child will begin to make a much wider variety of sounds and will be able to begin the process of speaking your language!

Research and More Info:

The Healthy Children website provides a wide variety of information about child development, including info about tummy time.

The Baby Center website has more great info about tummy time.

We also have a few great books about language development! Try:

Language Development by Erika Hoff (Information about larynx dropping begins on page 43.)
How to Talk to Your Baby by Dorothy Dougherty
How Babies Talk: The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life by Roberta Golinkoff

What (or who) is in the water?!

Have you ever wondered who or what lives in the water right here in Watertown?  On Saturday at 11:00am, you can find out!

Carole Smith Berney is a wildlife photographer, and she'll be sharing some of her amazing photographs with us!  Along our very own river walk, she's found and taken pictures of raccoons, great blue herons, snapping turtles, and much more!  All sorts of animals live right next to us along the Charles River, and you can find out more about them.

Carole will also talk about the efforts that have been made to preserve the river and the surrounding areas, and to protect the plants and animals who call it home.

There's no need to register, just come on by at 11:00 on Saturday.  The program is geared toward families with children in grades K-5.  We'll see you then!

Curious About Hurricanes?

After this week's brush with Hurricane Sandy, many kids may be curious about what causes hurricanes and how they work.  Never fear, we have plenty of resources for you!

Stop in at the library to explore a whole bunch of books about hurricanes and other natural disasters.  If you're interested in browsing books about all sorts of different weather and natural disasters, take a look in our nonfiction section around the Dewey Decimal Number 550.  And of course, you can always ask a librarian if there's something specific you're curious about.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Inside Hurricanes by Mary Kay Carson

Disasters Up Close: Hurricanes by Michael Woods and Mary B. Woods

Mangled by a Hurricane by Miriam Aronin

In addition to wonderful books, we can also connect you with a wealth of other electronic resources.  The Watertown Free Public Library subscribes to all sorts of wonderful, kid-friendly databases that you can access for free with your library card!

You can access all of our databases either in the library or by visiting our website from your home computer.  (If you're accessing them from home you'll need to type your library card number.)  Pick a database that looks good to you and just type "Hurricane" (or whatever else you're curious about) into the search box.

Kids InfoBits - This database is great for kids in grades K-5.
InfoTrack Junior - This one's excellent for upper elementary and middle school students.
PebbleGo - This one's great for the younger crowd.  First choose if you're interested in Animals or Earth and Space (for hurricanes, choose Earth and Space), then browse or use the search box.
World Book Encyclopedia Online Student Edition - World Book Online for Kids is great for elementary, and World Book Online Info Finder is best for middle school students.

Audiobooks for Little Ones: Reading and Listening Together

When you walk into the Children's Department, one of the first things you'll see are a bunch of hanging bags. Many people walk by without knowing what these bags contain, and they're pretty great.  Each bag contains a book, along with a CD with the audio for that book!  These book/CD combos are wonderful tools to help little ones feel more independence in their reading experiences.

We have a very wide collection of book/CD combos.  The majority of what we have are picture books, but there are a few nonfiction and easy reader selections mingled in there.  They're great for use at home or in the car, and teachers and childcare providers often check them out to use in listening stations and classrooms.  (They're located right next to the audiobooks on CD and the Playaways, which are also wonderful, and are usually for readers who are a little older.)

Additionally, the Watertown Free Public Library subscribes to a wonderful service called Tumblebooks.  Tumblebooks has a wide variety of books, ranging from picture books through chapter books, where the child can visually see the pages and hear the text read to them.  Additionally, the words change color as they're read aloud.  To explore this wonderful resource, click on the link and then enter your library card number.

All of these resources strongly support literacy development.  Reading and listening at the same time helps children learn using multiple modalities, so they're learning with both their eyes and ears simultaneously.  For kids who are a little bit reluctant to spend time reading, combining these two learning styles can often inspire more motivation and excitement about reading.  And the dual-learning model is especially helpful for English Language Learners.

Want to find out more?  Check out some of this research indicating that audiobooks strongly support literacy development:

Listening to Learn: Audiobooks Supporting Literacy by Sharon Grover and Lizette Hannegan.  This is a full-length book for anyone interested in learning a whole lot about this fascinating topic.

"Talking Books: Using Multimedia to Support Learning and Literacy," a 2008 article by Susan Bowdoin and Jonathan Brinkerhoff in the journal Learning and Leading with Technology.  The full text article is available through Academic OneFile, one of our research databases.

Story Time... with iPADS!

There's still space in Thursday's iLearn Preschool, for kids ages 3-5 with a caregiver!  We'll do an awesomely interactive story time with books, songs, rhymes and, of course, iPads!  Parents, you'll learn how to use an iPad to help your child develop certain literacy-related skills.

Each grown-up and child pair will get to use an iPad and two sets of headphones to explore new and exciting apps that teach your child a wide variety of sensory and cognitive skills.  This program does require registration, so stop in or call us at 617-972-6435 to sign-up!

Heifer International says THANKS!

Congratulations again to our Summer Readers!

Over the summer, kids in Watertown read a total of 2900 hours!  At the beginning of the summer, we set out to make donations to Heifer International when we reached certain reading goals.  When we read 500, 1000, 1500 and 2000 hours, we donated a flock of ducks, a flock of geese, rabbits, and a pig (respectively).  Obviously, the kids succeeded and blew these goals away!

Well, Heifer International officially said THANK YOU!  They sent us a certificate of appreciation, which is currently displayed at the Children's Reference Desk.  You can stop by and see it the next time you're in!

GREAT JOB everybody!!