10 Ways Your Child With Special Needs Can Benefit From a Trip To The Library

children's nonfiction

By Karen Wang, via The Friendship Circle Special Needs Resources

Everyday, 4.2 million Americans visit a library.  Are you one of them?

Almost every town in America has a public library, but many families of children with special needs shy away from libraries, often for behavioral reasons. These are the families who could benefit the most from the library!

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Storytime Goes STEM!

STEM storytime

By Rachel G. Payne

Yes, I freely admit it, I think too much like a librarian. Often this is an asset, but when I first started adding STEM into my storytime programs, this became a problem. I kept looking for books to read to kids in the non-fiction section. My go-to favorites were Red-Eyed Tree Frog by Joy Cowley, illustrated by Nic Bishop, and Actual Size by Steve Jenkins, both solidly in the 500s. While I love these books, I was thinking too small. It took Lynn Cole, a science educator from the Queens Library Children’s Discovery Center, to shift my thinking during her staff training on science activities for preschoolers at the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL). She opened my mind to another way of thinking about the books I was already sharing by reminding us we could find science and math concepts in the picture book section as much as anywhere.

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