Take a ride on the party bus!

PARTY BUS: The group met in the lobby this morning and were transported to Carson Library in two small passenger busses. Ours actually had the name "Party Bus" painted on the front, and inside neon lights, disco lights, mirrors, a flat screen cupholders, ice bar and stretch seating.

Breakfast at the Library was followed by a long but productive day and we closed the dining room down stairs a little while ago. We were the last ones to leave having made a reconnection with a former colleague of Renee’s who works for the Roseville Library near Sacramento. Now we want to visit their new library which shares a building and lobby entrance with a hands-on energy museum geared to children. It’s also connected to a sports complex and a park designed for special needs children. Road Trip! http://www.roseville.ca.us/library/locations_n_hours.asp

Today we heard from Kathleen Deerr who spoke on family centered services. She talked about changes in parenting, including telecommuting, two parents working, people out of work, grandparents parenting, single parents, teen parents and that we need to target services to this diverse parent culture. She discussed developmentally appropriate programming and encouraged us to view parents as partners.

We did a group activity to discover potential community partners but we already have our main partner, the Family Resource Center, on board.

The highlight of the day was Jennifer Birckmayer, retired educator from Cornell who now works as a consultant. She was a blast and completely low-tech. She spoke on play (whoo-hoo) and emerging literacy. She discussed three developmental stages; infancy, toddler and preschool as they relate to play and emergent literacy. Her latest book is From Lullabies to Literacy and we are both looking forward to reading it. She talked about reworking rhymes to make them appropriate for your audience and gave this example:

Old Mother Hubbard

Went to the cupboard

to get her poor dog a bone.

And when she got there

The cupboard was bare

And so the dog ordered pizza by phone!

She was excellent at modeling the abcs of attention, bonding and communication using a baby doll to model for us to model for parents. She was really inspiring and we would love to have her for a play symposium.

CoLAPL provided laptops for us to check email during the breaks but for whatever reason the ones Angelica and I sat down to would not connect with their wifi. Tonight we have encountered issues with the connection in my room and after two visits by the "help desk" moved to Angelica's room.

Ogo is tomorrow which may test Angelica's usual fondness for seaweed. Ogo and out.