While recently in Singapore, I discovered this beautiful picture book in a museum's bookstore. It is the story of two children somewhere in Indonesia, spending a fun day at the beach. Their mother's sarong comes in handy in many different ways. The story is accompanied by lovely illustrations. Even though the book is much longer than any of the stories I have shared so far with our PK1 students, I decided to give it a try as it seemed perfect for encouraging students to make predictions about the story and personal connections to the story, some of the skills we are working on with our youngest library users.

Our youngest students showed me that I was right in picking this story for them. They made wonderful predictions about what the children in the story might use the sarong for, for example, to sit on, to make a tent and hide in, to wrap and carry things in, to use as a cape, to use as a headgear, to use as a kite, or to cover yourself with. They also listened attentively and shared how much they enjoyed the story afterwards with me.

We also continue working on how to choose a book. Each week, I ask one of our students to model how to choose a book and many students are happy to demonstrate. While we have a strong representation of nonfiction readers among this year's PK1 students, I notice that students are spending more and more time exploring all of our recommendations, giving other books a try as well. 

Our PK1 students also continue to enjoy a Mandarin story each week.

Our PK1 students are loving their time in the library! We can tell by the big smiles and cheerful greetings we get already as they line up outside the library door. During this first month, our youngest library visitors got a chance to become familiar with what their time in the library looks like and active participation is increasing from week to week. While everyone clearly loved story time both in English and Mandarin from day one, more and more students have begun to make connections between the stories they hear and their own lives, and share this with the class. The Biscuit books by Alyssa Satin Capucilli, we have been reading together, lend themselves beautifully for making such connections. They are short and narrate events that are familiar to our students from their own lives, such as for example a visit to the library, a day at school or losing a toy. As you can see from the pictures below, our PK1 students are a wonderful audience, listening attentively.

There is always much excitement when it is time to choose books. Each week, we put a special pre-selection together for our students (books in English and in Mandarin) to narrow down the large amount of books available in our library and to help them in finding a book they will enjoy. The children however know already that they can ask us for books on topics of interest if they can't find what they are looking for among the displayed books. It is important to us, that also our youngest students have the opportunity to choose their own books. It is great to see that our students are spending more and more time looking through books before deciding which book to take home.

Our youngest students are still developing their knowledge about how libraries work and their responsibilities as library users, i.e. returning books so that others can enjoy them too. We would kindly like to ask you, the parents, to support them in this learning, by assisting them in returning their book to the library each week. 

We also invite parents to visit the library with their child after school to read together and/or check out additional books. The Primary library is open for you on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons between 3 and 4pm. Looking forward to seeing you at the library!