Our story-bags are ready. We have got about 11 lovely cotton bags filled with books, puppets, puppet gloves and some have audio books. There is In the Night Garden, The Queen’s Knickers, The Night Pirates, The Fish who could Wish, Dear Zoo and many more. A few things are still missing such as a black cat, treasure map, message in a bottle…  I am delighted that the first ones have already been borrowed. Inge from the Partou Day Care left with the Old McDonald story-bag (oversized book &  puppet glove) within five minutes of hanging it up.

The aim of these story-bags is to bring a book alive and inspire children to love books and to love reading. I hope you enjoy them – you can borrow them like any other book. I would like to add that these story-bags have been sponsored by a lovely lady who loves reading and who loves libraries. Thanks Jess. And a big thank you to Stella for sewing all the lovely bags and to Rachel for bringing back the puppets & books from UK.

And we are open again! The shelves have been cleaned, books re-organised, the story bags & stand are in place and more puppets are coming next week. We have added two new shelving units and around 150 new books and it is looking fab! And best of all, yesterday we welcomed 5 new members. That’s what it’s all about. See you soon. Tash

After a long summer, there are 6 more days left until the library opens again on Monday 25th. And I must say, I am quite excited.

So many things have happened. We have been given an additional shelf which adds about one meter in length to our area and fits around 200 books – great! 10 story bags are nearly ready – Stella put her copy-writing pen to one side and has been sewing away, creating different cotton bag models with lovely fabrics. All the books & puppets for the story bags will arrive in Breda in a week’s time. And finally, I have sourced the stand to hang up all the story bags after looking at what felt like a million kapstoks (coat stands). About 80 new books and some newly donated Tiny Reader Board books will be added the collection and we have now got wild-life, nature & science magazines for children.   

But first of all, I will have to take down all the covers that were protecting the books from dust & sun throughout the summer, clean all the shelves and put the books on display again! And even that I am excited about. 

So hope to see you all very soon at the library. If you are not a member yet, please send me a message – best over the public fb page:   https://www.facebook.com/thelittleenglishlibrary 

Big thank you to the Montessori +, Jess, Trish, Stella & Rachel. Tash 

Summer is nearly over and work for the library has begun. I have been busy sourcing resources for story bags. Story bags are a great way to bring books alive. They include the book, puppets and other props to help interpret the book. We were very lucky to get some private funding in for this little project and resources to fill 9 story bags have been purchased.  I have tried to create bags suitable for children aged 0-6.  We have books with puppets and fabulous nursery rhyme puppet gloves. I hope the gloves will be useful for teachers wanting to introduce a few English words and of course for Hazel who runs Rhyme Time for our little ones. If you are looking for more info on story bags, check this link  and check this to see what has been purchased. 

Since opening the library, finding a way of supporting children with dyslexia has been really important to me. We already have quite a few dyslexia-friendly books but I just couldn’t get me head around how to categorise them in way which was accessible but integrated. So now that I have been given some additional shelving, I decided to do some solid research. I have emailed a number of trusts & dyslexia support organisations in England and I am in the process of putting a book list together. I have also found a way of labelling & shelving dyslexia-friendly books. Any ideas or wishes children or parents of dyslexic children should have with regard to what they would like to see in a library to support their or their children’s reading needs, please send me a message.

See you soon.