Early literacy and language teacher shares original songs, rhymes, and games for ages birth to five.
Published 22. February 2023 by Storytime Solidarity
Mister Rogers was an ASMR show for kids before that even was a thing. His soothing voice, the soft visuals, and easy dialogue could soothe any frantic little person.
Rosie Camargo
Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Storytime Solidarity
↓ Ms. Christina is honored to have contributed to this Storytime Solidarity post on why Mister Rogers matters, including resources for your storytime! ↓
Published 31. January 2023 on Storytime Solidarity
We challenge you to help bring authentic Irish culture and heritage back to St. Patrick’s Day!
Ms. Christina
↓ Ms. Christina, Storytime Solidarity Director of Music and Media, shares best practices for St. Patrick’s Day programming in your libraries and classrooms. Let’s leave stereotypes and shallow symbols behind! ↓
The holidays are a delicate time for early childhood educators. In North America, December is dominated by Christmas, and yet it’s our job to make every child feel included in our spaces. That’s why I’m so excited to have contributed to this Storytime Solidarity article for keeping the holidays festive, educational, and inclusive for all!
Ms. Christina asks children’s book author Eoin McLaughlin what non-Irish authors often miss when writing about Ireland. His answer: “[I]f you’re going to write an ‘Irish’ story, I suppose you just need to …”
Read the interview at Storytime Solidarity!
Published 4. March 2022 on Storytime Solidarity
Ms. Christina
Click ↓ for full article
Published 16. December 2021 on StorytimeSolidarity.com
Friends, colleagues, caregivers, we made it another year! Give yourselves a big high-five and self-hug. Under difficult conditions, we found ways to nurture our little ones and fill our libraries, classrooms, and homes with warmth and joy.
For me, 2021 was a year of teaching early literacy online and reading a lot — a lot! — of picture books. I am excited to share a selection of the best picture books from my class this year, arranged into my top five overall and top five in the categories of biography, humor, mindfulness, inclusion, and science. These books were not published in 2021, they were the ones that made my young learners — across time zones and hemispheres — lean in and light up. These were the books that made us all feel connected and better about the world around us.
So next year, when you’re looking for that perfect book for your storytime, circle time, or anytime together with your kids, look here!
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Published 31. October 2021 on StorytimeSolidarity.com
Are you serious? The song “Five Little Monkeys“ (FLM) used to be “Five Little N-words?” I’d been hearing that casual racism was in the very fabric of modern life. I’d been trying to listen and grasp this point, though I didn’t really get it. But when my youth services colleagues started talking about not using “FLM” in their story times anymore, and I looked into the reasons why, I suddenly saw the problem in sharp detail and felt that I had to do something. Here’s how I have been dealing with latent racism in my children’s programming ever since.
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It is my pleasure to announce two wonderful new websites created in 2021. These two projects emerged in my life as diamonds in the rough, that is, the rough second autumn of the COVID19 pandemic. Think of these websites as lotuses in the muck, phoenixes from the ashes, lemonade from the lemons, silver linings in the sable cloud, bright spots in the — okay, okay, you get the point. Without further ado, I present:
Singrhymeandplay.com and Storytimesolidarity.com! Now let me tell you more about each.
Singrhymeandplay.com is a hub where people enjoying my early literacy content — either from Outschool, YouTube, or library forums — can learn more about the project overall. Sing, Rhyme, and Play all started in early 2020 during quarantine. My spouse (artist and designer) and I wanted to share the original story time content I had been creating at the library before it shut down. We realized this content could support librarians, teachers, caregivers, and parents throughout the pandemic if we made it available for free on YouTube. We called the channel, “Sing, Rhyme, and Play.”
Later that year, with no end to COVID19 in sight, my daughter schooling from home, and no clear path for me to return to my library job, I created Sing, Rhyme, and Play Circle Time, an early literacy class I offered on Outschool. The online class is for ages 3-5 and uses my original content from the YouTube channel. Sing, Rhyme, and Play has grown a lot since then, and exciting new connections are being made all the time. Which brings me to …
In early October 2021, after sharing several of my original songs and rhymes in the Storytime Solidarity Facebook Group, I got chatting with the group’s founder, Miss Kate, a.k.a., the Lavender Librarian. After talking through some issues we were both grappling with in our work, Miss Kate invited me to write the first guest blog post — “Eeny Meeny Miny NO: How You Can Rid Your Storytime Songs of Unintended Racism” — on the new website they were building, Storytimesolidarity.com.
Well, I wasn’t a guest blogger for long! I was so inspired by the work Storytime Solidarity was doing — providing resources, craft ideas, song lyrics, and book recommendations to the early literacy community — that I quickly joined their Content Team. Check these people out! The Storytime Solidarity crew is an inspiring group working from many corners of the world to make it a better, kinder, happier place for children everywhere. And their grownups too.
In addition to all the programming resources on Storytimesolidarity.com, I also recommend checking out the other amazing blog posts they’ve got up: “Five Books Celebrating Caribbean Christmas,” “Picture Books to Celebrate Jewish Holidays,” and many more coming soon!
Friends, it’s bleak out there on the screens these days — with an ongoing pandemic, political strife, and other crises looming — but on these two websites, you will find a better world. And the tools to build your own better world too.
“Let’s help welcome every little best friend to storytime!”
Miss Kate
May these two websites, Singrhymeandplay.com and Storytime Solidarity.com, be for you the lotuses in the muck, phoenixes from the ashes, lemonade from the lemons, silver linings in the sable cloud, and bright spots in the darkscape that they have been for me this year.
~Ms. Christina
Sing, Rhyme, and Play 