Sutherland Shire Libraries News

Developing Literacy for Kinders to  Grade 2

OR

 Extending Literacy for Grades 3-6


Developing Literacy offers the following options to entice kids to interact with the alphabet, story telling, reading along with the narrator, as well as playing games, solving puzzles and creating with paper.





















Extending Literacy offers animated and narrated readers from Reading grades 1-3  in each of the 12 genres featured.
The last eleven sections offer a more informational reading options as well as support and practice in essential literacy skills.































Learn more about eResources the library has for children book now for a free information session.

Try these other reading games
Busy Things
Enjoy hundreds of literacy, numeracy and problem solving games
Literacy Planet 
English language skill building has never been more fun.
In2era
Characters and stories come to life with Picture Books Online.
Early World of Learning
An educational and fun resource produced by World Book Encyclopedia


The Puffin Browser is often required for mobile devices - download it from the relevant app store.

Literacy Planet covers key areas of English literacy:
Pre-Reading, Phonics, Reading, Vocabulary, Spelling, Grammar & Comprehension, with over 10,000 fun, interactive activities.

Suitable for all years of schooling from preschool to Year 12!

To begin using Literacy Planet, parents will need to create a student account for each child.

This account allows you to track your child's progress and they will receive motivational rewards. Once the student accounts have been created you will be emailed a unique login for each child.  Whenever your children return to Literacy Planet they can login to their personal account and continue from where they left off.

New students are given 200 credit points which allow them to play games in the Arcade and buy avatars in the shop. Each activity completed gets you more credit points. To complete activities, go to the Academy!

 

 The Academy is divided into school year with many activities for each year. Learning areas offered differ depending on the year. The earlier years cover phonics, sight words, spelling, reading, comprehension and grammar, whilst the later years just focus  on grammar. Each learning area has numerous fun activities to engage even the most reluctant learner.
Flick through 100 books which can be read or listened to, suitable for 5 - 10 year olds. The categories include creatures, disasters, mysteries, sport.

Try out your new learned skills in the Arena, with Word Mania a word building game, and Donkey Dash a spelling game, Compete against the computer, anyone else online or just your own friends.
Spend some well earned credits here, by buying attempts at four different games. The chance to advance through numerous levels will keep the credit earning motivation going with Sheep bounce, PenPen's Express, Block Stack and Turtle Knock providing a fun and rewarding way to relax.
Create your own avatar in the MyProfile area. Mix up your face, colour and buy the clothes you want to be seen in from the shop. This is now how you will appear every time you login and to anyone around the world who's logged in at the same time. Until you change your look yourself! Beware you need credits points for this.

Early World of Learning is a fun site for pre-school to year 2 students, produced by World Book Encyclopedia. It contains three learning environments, each targeting a critical area of the development of young learners in early elementary grades.

READ
Trek's Travels offers narrated stories, interactive games, and original videos that teach critical early childhood themes, including numbers, shapes, colors, opposites, and more.
Welcome to Reading provides leveled reading practice to develop and strengthen phonics, vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and comprehension skills.
Know it is a child's first online encyclopedia. Know It provides a richly visual interactive encyclopedia that will captivate early learners with nonfiction topics of interest and importance to them. 

PLAY
Put the story in order offers the chance to test listening  skills.Click or tap the picture to hear it read aloud. Drag the events from the story into the order in which they happened.
Concentration is a memory game. Select a second card to try to find its matching pair, to create the full scene.
Multiple choice offers a story and once it is read drag the correct word to the sentence to complete it.
Sorting offers the chance to play with word sounds. Drag each picture to the bucket showing the required sound. Click or tap the picture to hear it read aloud. Working with short and long vowel sounds, beginning, middle and end of word sounds.

WATCH
Watch videos which explore and explain the world. Divided into categories of  interest, over a hundred of these very short videos demonstrate concepts, nature and places as only pictures can.
 Learn more about eResources the library has for children book now for a free information session.

Try these other reading games
Busy Things - Enjoy hundreds of literacy, numeracy and problem solving games
In2era - Characters and stories come to life with Picture Books Online.
Ziptales - A reading program packed with stories, games, videos and puzzles.

The Puffin Browser is often required for mobile devices - download it from the relevant app store.

Busy Things
Enjoy hundreds of literacy, numeracy and problem solving games

Literacy Planet English language skill building has never been more fun.

In2era
Characters and stories come to life with Picture Books Online.

Ziptales
A reading program packed with stories, games, videos and puzzles.
Early World of Learning
An educational and fun resource produced by World Book Encyclopedia.

For the opportunity to learn more about these and other eResources the library has for children
book now for a free information session.

The Puffin Browser is often required for mobile devices - download it from the relevant app store.

Have a sneak peek at what Busy Things has to enjoy.











These five activity areas divide up 120 different games. Each game promotes the learning of an essential skill.
The games are aimed 3-6 yr olds, so are bright and constantly moving…even the pattern as the games load is exciting, so their interest is not lost whilst setting -up

Choose Exploring Media and Materials, and have another 17 games to chose from. Running the cursor over a button, (or touching on a tablet) tells you what each game is and makes even the choosing fun.



BusyThings works on iPhone and Android without the Puffin browser, the view is different and there are fewer 'games', but is essentially the same.

The Thursday before Easter saw a frenzy of mad young scientists invading the Library. Back by popular demand, Darren from Fizzics Education presented the 'Big Science! Big Fun!' one hour presentation. 80 kids enjoyed the presentation which included the wonders of liquid nitrogen, the amazing hover board and experiments using sound and air. The most enjoyable part for the Kids was saved for the finale as the Kids watched the floating toilet paper glide through the air.

Darren had some lunch and afterwards guided a group of Kids through 'Construct-a-Dino'. The Kids had a brief lesson on the history of dinosaurs before launching into making their own T-Rex. The wooden kits required the kids to use both their concentration and their fine motor skills. The skeletal finished product was quite delicate and the Kids very carefully carried them home.

Each school holidays, Sutherland Shire Libraries hold a bundle of seriously fun activities for Kids (just between you and me, they are so much fun they make me wish I was still a Kid). To find out more about upcoming activities keep an eye on our events calendar.

Kerry has 7 years of clinical counselling experience. She has developed programs to help children with confidence and has a primary focus on working with families who struggle with anxiety.

Kerry has written two books - Mr Jitters to help families and children aged 4-9 with anxious moments and Speech Day Jitters to assist children aged 8-13 with performance anxiety.

These sessions are free but bookings are essential. Book online for the Engadine or Menai session or call Library Services to secure your place today.

Session One
When: Thursday 19th May 2011
Where: Engadine Library
Time: 10.30am - 11.30am

Session Two
When: Friday 20th May 2011
Where: Menai Library
Time: 1.15pm - 2.15pm

Bookings for our Lapsit program in terms 3 and 4 are now open.

Lapsit is a four week program designed to introduce babies (6-18 months) to books and rhymes assisting in the development of early childhood literacy.

The program consists of four weekly sessions in which babies and their carers join us for rhymes, fingerplays, songs, puppets and simple board books. Each session ends with an informal information time for carers.

Our major prize winners were also announced on the day. Our 0-4 year old winner received a bag of goodies, our 5-8 year old winner a digital camera, our 9-12 year old and teen winners both received an IPod touch. Congratulations to all.

1,208 kids took part in the Summer Reading Club reading a total of 15,165 books!

100 teens took part in the Teen Reading Club reading a total 781 books!

A big thank you to major sponsor: The Tradies
and our other sponsors:

• Sutherland Shire Leisure Centres
• AES Library Supplies
• Bloomin' Books Caringbah
• Sydney Tramway Museum
• Hazelhurst Regional Gallery
• Australian National Maritime Museum
• Child's Play Australia

Darkness creeped across the land, the midnight hour was close at hand; when 30 slightly weirded out kids(after seeing our costumes!) joined us for our Scary Holiday Storytime at Cronulla. Our hosts for the day were Cheryl the witch and Debbie the vampire. Scary stories were told, scary songs were sung, eyeballs and spiders were flying across the room into big, green monster hands, much to the kids enjoyment! The huge bright orange pumpkin piñata was a massive hit and it took many massive hits by the kids to finally break it open and cause a cascade of lollies to fall to the ground! Everyone also enjoyed making the bouncy bat craft with the parents getting into the fun as well.