5 months after opening, The Little English Library is now closed for the summer.

If you have been following The Little English Library, you will know that it has been 5 very busy months and 5 amazing months.

We now have 134 library members from 12 schools in & around Breda and 2 daycare centres. Our members go to school at the KBS Petrus & Paulus, Rudolf Steiner, International School Breda, KBS De Driezwing, KBS St. Jozef Rijen, De Grienden, Dr De Visser, Nutsbasisschool DeHoogakker, KBS Laurentius,  De Nassau  and 71 members are students of the Montessori+. 

Our youngest member must be Anna, 7 months old and who comes with her mum Hazel from Tilburg. Hazel has been running a lovely Rhyme time session during the The Breda Monkeys Mums & Tots meet up. Thank you.

Amongst our library members we have a few adults, too – some mums and also day care professionals from Partou & Kober Boie and some enthusiastic teachers from the Montessori.

I have had a quick look at languages spoken by our members and roughly 78 children are Dutch speakers, 35 are bilingual (English-Dutch, Spanish-Dutch, French-Dutch and French-English) and 12 are English only.

So far 601  books have been borrowed and returned and  only 5 books are a few months overdue which is an incredibly low number.

As you know the library works with a self-service check out system so thank you for making it work. Thank you for visiting the library, enjoying the books, taking so well care of them and returning them. And of course thank you to all supporters & sponsors of The Little English Library.

We will be open for ‘business’ again 25.08.2014. Have a lovely summer and see you soon. Thank You. Tash

And the award goes to …

These are our Certificates of Achievement for 2014 and I have just finished completing and signing them. Gosh some children have been busy reading!

12 certificates are going to children at the Montessori, 16 to children from 6 schools in & around Breda (KBS Petrus enPaulus, Rudolf Steiner, ISB, Kbs De Driezwing, KBS St. Jozef Rijen, De Grienden) and 2 are going to Montessori / Partou. I wonder what next year will bring….

And yes, it has been busy. End of term for a lecturer (that’s me) is always busy but this time around it has been extremely busy. I only joined ASIS in November last year so there has been a lot to learn.

The library has also been busy. The Rudolf Steiner School in Breda was so kind to mention the library in their newsletter and so more children from the Vrije School have joined, which is great news.  At last count we had children from 12 different schools in & around Breda.

Then there is Elena, MA student in Product Service Design from the University of Delft. Her dissertation is on children’s libraries so she has come to observe children using The Little English Library and carry out a research project. The research project is now in its final phase. She has been working with 4 pupils (8 years +)  of Mrs Danker’s class at the Montessori. In English they have been discussing their library likes and dislikes, favourite books and creating a questionnaire and conducting interviews. Well done and I look forward to reading the results.

The Little English Library has also entered a national competition.Together with the Montessori School we are aiming to win (of course)  the National Competition for Primary & Secondary Education in NL. We need to submit all the evidence by September. Fingers crossed!

And the last point of this post: Book Bags. Yes we are having book bags printed for all our little library members. It’s a great way to know where to keep your library books in the house and a great way to say thank you for all the support this project has received from friends and volunteers. The book bag design will be revealed soon … but I can tell you these bags rock! The design has been created by Rachel, owner of Titch Design. Thank you!

It’s nearly June and May has been an amazing month.

The month of May brought us our first substantial sponsorship. Mr Nies Rijnders, The Dean of ASIS at AVANS Hogeschool (and my boss), likes The Little English Library. ASIS runs English taught BA degrees and he could see the benefit of sponsoring a project which supports English Literacy & English Language Learning at Primary School Level. Higher Education supporting Primary Education – a Dean with vision.

Funds will of course be used to buy books but a little will also go to supporting the Montessori School with the completion of the school’s library space. The school has been most welcoming and generous, The Little English Library is part of their library, so I am delighted that we can now in return help in this final phase.

May also saw Drama Teacher Claudette from the  Vlinderfabriek join one of the IWC Mums & Tots meetings at the Montessori School. Claudette and I had a look at a few books she could use for her English Toddler Drama Session and she decided to go with Rod Campbell’s Dear Zoo. And from what I gather, it was a huge success.

And then there is Mandy from English Just 4 You who runs the English After School Clubs at Montessori. She gave her classes some tasks and sent them down to the The Little English Library for field research. Fabulous. I am sure in time the library and its books will be used more and more to supplement English Language class activities – by Montessori but hopefully also by other local schools.

Finally, you might remember the 2014 School Library Association Inspiration Award. Well, we did not get short-listed but I have been urged to reapply next year. I was sent a lovely email by the director and to see that such an organisation thinks we are doing a good job, means a lot.

So that was May but obviously I could not finish without mentioning Ilse, the little girl from England who had already sent books to us but this time came to personally drop off her books she didn’t need any more. Thank you Ilse.

Now, let’s see what June brings. Thanks Tash