 Next up in our lighting rounds we have Kathy Hale, who is the director of the Savenburg Public Library in Savenburg, Kansas. And she is going to talk about growing together libraries and homeschool families. Go ahead and take it away, Kathy. Once upon a time there was a lonely librarian in a very small town in Kansas. One day her library was given over 170 books to share with preschool children. So she began to plot and to plan how to get these books and stories to the children. She went to a workshop and learned to tell stories. Then she looked for children and found two in her town. But alas, they belonged to homeschooling families. Their mother could not bring them unless the whole family came. So she decided to plan a story time, crafts and activities for children of all ages. She planned a Valentine's party and coaxed many families to come. They all loved it and agreed to return. So the story time was born and continues to thrive. The librarian is seldom lonely because the children love to visit her library. So how do we do it? We have set up a Facebook page and we announce our events on there and we send out reminders through a chat group on Messenger to the Mothers. I usually announce our theme and ask for RSVPs so that I can better plan for crafts and snacks. Sometimes I suggest a show and tell for the children to bring. We have our program on a special hour. I went to the library board and asked them if I could have an extra hour every month to do a story time. It's just an hour before our regular opening time because it would be very difficult for me to do a story time and run the desk because we just have a single staff person. We meet once a month from September through May. I always tell two stories. They're usually geared toward four and five-year-olds and one of them is always like a rhyming story for the littler ones. We have a show and tell which is optional for the children. Sometimes I've mentioned what they could bring from home in the little chat message. Other times that we have a craft and I ask the children to share with the group what they've made and we always have snacks. We also plan a fun activity. It might be a food craft that goes with the story or painting or outside games, relays, we like songs, we have rhythm instruments, and we just vary these from month to month. The Valentine's Party continues to be our most successful event. The children make Valentine boxes and bring Valentine's for the other attendees. I get RSVPs for this and then I go back and I say, okay, this year you need to bring 40 Valentine's. We start with a story. Actually, we started with a game and then we had our story time and then we split the group. When I split the group, I always make sure I'm sending at least two mothers with the half of the group. This is a food craft we made when we had the story of the tortoise and the hare. It's a half of Granny Smith apple. They were given a plastic knife and they cut the grapes in half and carved on their turtles. Dr. Seuss' birthday party is a big event. We have all of our books out and the mothers either read to the children or the children read them themselves. As you can see, we don't have very many faces in these pictures. Some of the people prefer that their children are not online, so we respect their privacy. They also have made ornaments for the community Christmas tree. Our volunteer fire station is across the street. We've had a tour for that. We do kind of a fire safety program and then they come back to the library. They wrote thank you notes and colored pictures which were then taken over to the fire chief. One month, they dressed up as one of their favorite storybook characters. They brought the book and that was mostly a show and tell day. This last year, we had an American girl tea party for girls of all ages. This was open to our whole community, but the homeschooling families love to attend. Here's two of my homeschool girls introducing their dolls to the other 50 ladies that were there. Some of our programs have homework. We had a bridge building contest. We gave them a Ziploc bag with popsicle sticks and instructions. It had some glue. We had some other books on how to build a bridge out, but their bridges had to be a certain length. Then we had a day where they were judged. They knew the weight would be in the middle and bridges were eliminated as they succumbed to the weight. Another time, we had a storybook pumpkin contest and they brought their pumpkins decorated. These were on display for several weeks in the library in October. Without the mother's help with the crafts and games, this wouldn't go. They also help by when we split the groups. Occasionally, they will offer to take the older group and tell a story, do a craft, plan the whole program with them. Then they also recommend books to others. They might say, if you're looking for some short file books, my child really liked this or has your child read this series? We have in turn tried to help our mothers. The group itself is kind of a support group for them. It's a chance for them to connect with others, families that perhaps they don't know. We try to develop their teaching skills through the stories that we tell and some learning activities that we have. We also have taught them about our resources. This past fall, we had a mom's night out and 16 mothers came to learn about some of our resources. We belong to a consortium of 40 other libraries with an online library catalog. We showed them how to conduct searches, how to put items on hold and answered questions about that. Then we encouraged them and they all really wanted to to get a Kansas State Library card. This is an online library with digital books, audio books. They subscribe to manga languages, learning express, universal class. There's practice tests for GED and ACT. These moms weren't aware of those resources were out there and they were something they could really use. The children are growing through these last few years. We've done this program five years. I can see them growing in literary skills, social skills, classroom skills and manners. They learn to take turns to stand in line to raise their hand to answer a question and they're getting experience in public speaking. I've seen several very shy children be able to speak in front of the group. In return, our library is growing. Some of our collection development has been targeted toward the homeschool families. When we first started this program, we realized that we needed to break our juvenile collection down. We previously just had easy juvenile fiction and juvenile nonfiction and we've added beginning readers, board books and biographies. It doesn't just help the homeschool families. It makes it more accessible to the rest of our patrons. The homeschoolers have increased our program attendance, not just for the monthly meetings, but they also come to our other events and they come to our summer reading programs. I have also developed skills in storytelling and I endeavor to learn new things to meet their needs because I enjoy learning with a purpose. The increase in our circulation is further evidence that this storytime has made a big difference. We began in 2013 and the blue line is the juvenile circulation for the years and the brown line is our overall circulation. In closing today, I realize that not all of you have the same demographics that I do, but I hope that some of this overview of our program will encourage you to reach out to homeschool families. Our libraries have so many resources to offer them and they have been great consumers of our library services. Finally, although I have a very small population around 100 people and on the decline and I even have a smaller budget, I often apply this quote, do what you can with what you have where you are by Theodore Roosevelt. So that's it. Thank you, Kathy. Oh, we can get your slides back. Yeah, there you go. Thank you very much. That was great. I loved the beginning. I was hoping it would be a story, but that's okay. We do have some questions. Some other people are also homeschooler librarians as well. A couple of questions for you. And I'm not sure if you did mention this or not. How far do the families come for this? How far, like, in distance are they from? When I had the mom's night out, they were coming from over an hour away, but the ones who primarily come for the monthly story time are within 30 miles. And we are a rural community. Sure. Okay. And all of you mentioned a lot of different events and programs. Were these all at that 1 p.m. time or were they at other times for other things? Both the Valentine's Party and the Bridge Building were at other times, and primarily they were the monthly times. The Valentine's Party is an exclusive 1 o'clock time. Okay. So they have a standard time when they know come every time at the same. Did you get any pushback from other families, not homeschool families, public school families or anything, who couldn't attend these programs at those times? I have preschooler families. I have preschools, children who come, who are not part of homeschool families. And as I was preparing this, I actually have three public school teachers that bring their children to preschool time. They're not working currently. I even have somebody who has a degree in preschool education who comes and just sits there and watches me go through all this stuff. But no, I had a little bit of... I had one person object to the Valentine's Party. She was a working mom. She said, well, I would have liked to come to this, but she's never come to our other activities on Saturdays when she's not working. So I just encouraged her to try some of those first. Yeah. All right. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Kathy. That was great. We are going to move...