Masterton Library’s much loved and hugely popular Rainbow Kids pre-school programme is no more. But parents, caregivers, and pre-schoolers please don’t fret. It’s simply been given a new name, Story-Go-Round, and kicked off with the first new session on the 4th of May.
Masterton Library has been operating a free, weekly pre-school programme for approximately 19 years and for the last eight years this has been known as Rainbow Kids. It was decided that a fresh new name would be invigorating for the programme and that the old name may be causing some confusion. After much discussion and deliberation amongst staff we arrived at the name Story-Go-Round, a combination of the sharing of stories and the play connotations of a merry-go-round.
Story-Go-Round will continue to provide a fun and educational experience for pre-schoolers every Wednesday during term time. The sessions start at 10:30am, generally with a 20-25 minute period of storytelling and songs, followed by a craft activity. The craft activities are designed to encourage basic skills like cutting, colouring and pasting and result in some wonderful creations. Our preschool programme is particularly popular with those aged 2-3 years, but all preschoolers and their caregivers are welcome. There is no charge to attend the sessions and all the craft materials are likewise provided for free.
The other change to the programme was the decision to no longer produce a printed pamphlet outlining the whole terms planned activities. This was proving to have a detrimental effect on the programme as sticking to it meant the children’s team could not easily respond to events in the community, while changing it could cause disappointment amongst some participants. The Christchurch Earthquake for example was high in everyone’s awareness and could have been used for a number of learning experiences such as the work done by emergency services or ways to stay safe in an earthquake.
While this term will have an overriding theme of people who help us, the children’s team now have the flexibility to respond to new events and ideas as they come up. Jane and Cindy will still be planning ahead to relate the programme to regular events going on in the community such as Golden Shares, Balloons over Wairarapa and Mother’s Day, but now they can also present any new subjects they think would be good to cover. This will make Story-Go-Round even more vibrant, relevant, and fun for those attending the sessions.
Our weekly pre-school session has been one of the great success stories here at the library and we are certain this will continue with Story-Go-Round. We have many regular faces amongst the participants and frequently have whole families of children coming along until each in turn reaches school age. We then see many coming to the library as older children and teenagers, and signing up for the Summer Reading and Read Plus reading programmes. We have even had one former member working here at the library as a student shelver.
Pre-school programmes are a great way of introducing children to books, reading and the library and this has huge benefits for their future learning. The sessions are also very valuable for making connections between families and library staff and there are many social benefits for both children and their caregivers in attending the weekly sessions. So Rainbow Kids may be gone, but rest assured that Story-Go-Round will be keeping up the good work for our youngest library users.
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