Hi Abby, I think it depends on how you are creating your StoryWalks. The original StoryWalk® calls for books to be physically disassembled and the pages laminated and posted to avoid violating the title’s copyright. But if you would like to scan or screen capture and reprint the book (which may be easier), you’ll need permission. For our StoryWalk at FCL, we want to be able to scan the books and reprint them and we do need to get permission for that.
Hi Teresa, yes we do laminate the pages before putting them into the frames. The frames are not water tight, so we laminate them to keep them looking nice. I do believe they have been holding up well enough to reuse once we started getting permission to just capture digital images of the pages and reprint them. The very first StoryWalk where we cut apart a physical book, pasted onto our layout and laminated the whole thing did NOT stand up. The pages from the physical book faded badly in the sun. Since then we've been asking permission to scan in the pages or screen cap the e-book and reprint the whole thing and those are holding up very well.
Right? My new goal for myself is to try to have no more than 20 books checked out at a time. Which gets a little sticky when it's picture books, but we're going to give it a try. (Confession: I currently have 21 checked out... but I'm holding on to a couple I have finished for a book discussion on Saturday, so... grace. :) )
Definitely most of them! I didn't count, to be honest, but that's one reason my goal was so high. If I was going to guess I'd say probably at least 2/3 of the books I logged were picture books.
Hi Jacqui! Yes, we spaced all 20 posts around the .75 mile path. I don't remember the exact math, but I think it ended up being a post about every 600 feet. A StoryWalk has a lot of flexibility in that way. One thing to consider as you look at parks and areas in your community is what age you're aiming the stories at and how long they can walk. Littles may not be able to hang in there for much longer than 0.5 - 0.75 miles (I actually think ours is a little bit long for it). I wouldn't worry about it being too short. Having the attention span to listen to a story spread out over a 15-20 minute stroll may be asking a lot of them! As you work on it, feel free to reach out if you have any questions about ours! I'm always happy to talk StoryWalks!
I have been updating our homeschool print collection, but I usually do that every year as the new school year starts up again because we do weekly programs (now virtual) for our homeschooling families, so we serve a lot of them. We're also compiling resources on our website that families can use - our state's DOE homeschool info, free tutoring resources, etc. and with the help of some of our local homeschoolers we're putting together a massive resource email that we can easily forward with local homeschool support groups, online resources, curriculum resources, etc.
We are adding tutor.com to help with homeschooling, virtual school, and general students. We are also looking at adding an option for our form reader's advisory so parents can explicitly request books to help with lesson plans or home education. It's a service we already offer, but I find that not many people realize that they can just contact us and ask us to select books for them. I'm hoping if we make it more explicit, we'll have more takers. We're working out how to word it and what information we need from them.
Ooh, thanks for that title suggestion, Samantha! It's great to have a more recent text on working with homeschoolers in the library, for sure!
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Medley