In late summer of 2022 I was getting bored with my storytime routine and decided to try something new. I recalled an old colleague who used PowerPoint in her storytimes, sharing the words of songs and rhymes, and thought I’d try something similar. Using Canva, I created slides for each segment of storytime. The first slide is always an announcement of some kind, announcing a special upcoming event, a storytime that might be cancelled, or sharing something special that we do at the library like our 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten program.
When storytime starts, I flip over to the Storytime slide and do my usual introduction. Then we click over to our first opening song slide. Again, every segment has it’s own slide, so when it’s time for a story, I click to a blank storytime slide so there is nothing distracting on the screen. For recorded music, I find the lyrics online or transpose them myself and add it all into a slide.
How did this change my storytimes? The biggest change I noticed was in parents, who the slides are really for. They now sing along with me on a regular basis and they are more active in movement rhymes. They take pictures of their child’s favorites rhymes so they can do them at home or so they can add a favorite song to their child’s playlist. Several years ago I tried paper handouts of songs, but found that parents usually have their hands full (literally!) and couldn’t do much with the sheets (plus they were usually left behind afterwards). The slides eliminated the paper problem and helped parents become active participants in storytime, which models great participation for their kiddos.
Switching to the slide format also has changed how I plan for storytime. When I began, I filled my slide show with my go-to and favorite songs and rhymes. With each storytime session and theme that I do, I add more slides. Now I’m up to about 120 slides of storytime content. At this point, I only need to create 1 or 2 new themed slides and then scan through my old slides for other fun additions to each session. I do have to decide what I’m going to do before hand and stick with it, whereas before I might have a sheet of 6 different rhymes and decide on the fly which to use. Each storytime usually runs about 15 slides long, depending on how many action songs/rhymes I use.
Want to see all my slides? Click here!
