| Newsletter for Bookstart scheme coordinators August 2008 | Download pdf 290Kb |  |
News from Bookstart
National Bookstart Day 2008
Materials for this year’s National Bookstart Day were sent out to all schemes at the start of August.
Each scheme coordinator will receive one mail-out to include a quantity of the following materials according to the size of your scheme:
- A4 poster; A3 event poster; bookmarks; lapel stickers; pirate Rhymetime sheets; pirate puppet; A5 invite cards; 500 x Pirates Ahoy! Books bundled into packs of 50 (not available to Welsh schemes)
We hope that you will be able to distribute these materials to libraries within your local authority as soon as you are able.
To help plan your Pirates Ahoy celebrations there are further resources available on the website at:
NB When you do know the details of events in your area, please update the Events Calendar on our website. We really need your events as far in advance as possible to best promote them.
We hope there'll be as many wonderful events being held this year as there were last, so best of luck to everyone.
Bookstart TV campaign targeting Dads
Bookstart launched a second national television campaign in June aimed specifically at hard-to-reach dads.
The two adverts aimed to encourage dads to make time to read with their children and first aired on Monday 9 June.
You can view the adverts below:
 | Goblins (.wmv file) | |
| Moon and back (.wmv file) |
Bookstart Dads toolkit
We’ve been working hard at the national level to support Bookstart locally and we need your help to engage with more fathers. To support your work with dads, we’ve produced an online toolkit with information, resources and examples of best practice designed to help you work with fathers locally.
The toolkit has been designed to support coordinators in developing work with the significant men in children’s lives. The toolkit draws on case studies of Bookstart colleagues in eight different areas of the UK.
To log on to the site visit.
We’d like to hear your feedback on the Dads online toolkit and share any experiences you feel would be of valuable interest to other schemes. You can email feedback@booktrust.org.uk to give us your feedback.
Golden certificate
As you are aware we produced ten brand new Bookstart Book Crawl certificates earlier this year as part of Booktrust's contribution to the National Year of Reading.
And now all schemes should have received their Golden certificates! Children can receive these wonderful certificates once they have collected ten of any other Bookstart Book Crawl certicates from their library.
Our Bookstart certificates generate around 800,000 visits to libraries, so we hope our Golden certificate will help to increase membership and active use and support the National Year of Reading library joining campaign.
See this fantastic article from from the Teesside Gazette:
News from Booktrust
Early Years 2008 awards
Booktrust has announced the 2008 shortlist for their Early Years Awards.
The shortlisted books all exemplify the remarkable creativity in words, design and illustration necessary to encourage young children to read.
The winner for each category will be announced at an awards ceremony to be held at BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London on the evening of 23 September 2008.
The shortlists for the 2008 awards were announced on 29 July.
For more information go to:
http://www.booktrust.org.uk/show/feature/Home/Booktrust-Early-Years-Awards
Celebrate with the Big Picture Party
The Big Picture Party is a month-long extravaganza initiated by Booktrust, the Campaign for Drawing and the Campaign for Learning to celebrate picture books and encourage family learning through drawing.
It is all about putting picture books and illustrators in the public eye during October.
By holding a Big Picture Party event for families in your library you could:
- attract new families to your library using a creative approach
- highlight the wealth of resources and services you offer
- increase your membership amongst family members
- gain media attention
- promote it as a National Year of Reading event
- strengthen links with your local community
- tie into national objectives such as Framework for the Future and Public Library Impact Measures.
Libraries can download a free resource to help them plan and promote their Party from www.familylearningweek.com
We are inviting all types of libraries to get involved in all types of settings. The three libraries with the most inspiring ideas registered by 5 September will ‘win’ an Illustrator to participate in their event and will benefit from a national PR campaign.
To enter you must register your event at www.familylearningweek.com
There are many more events happening across the UK throughout October:
- www.bigpicture.org.uk for book events
- www.thebigdraw.org for drawing events
- www.welovelearning.co.uk for family learning events
Challenge minds and build confidence this October
Last year thousands of libraries opened their doors as part of National Family Learning Week (FLW). Offering everything from belly dancing in a library, a tea party in a museum, carnival masks at a travellers’ site to a cultural festival in a college!
Join in the fun throughout October for this year’s Family Learning Festival. The Family Learning Festival incorporates Family Learning Week, which is an annual awareness campaign organised by the Campaign for Learning (CfL) aimed at encouraging family members of all ages to try new activities, have some fun together and get the learning bug!
By taking part you can:
- Attract new and existing audiences to your venue/organisation
- Build new/closer relationships with local families, communities and other organisations
- Raise the profile of your organisation within the community
- Promote and signpost wider opportunities for learning in your organisation and local area
- Try out innovative new ideas
- Contribute to the Every Child Matters agenda
The Family Learning team at CfL can offer you grassroots support, expert family learning advice, free PR, as well as online and printed resources for event organisers and families – all under the umbrella of a national campaign.
If you haven’t already, you can find out more about the benefits of opening the doors of your organisation to families during this year’s Family Learning Festival. Contact the Family Learning Week team and register your interest for more information, resources and support.
website: www.familylearningweek.com
For more information on Family Learning within Bookstart please contact
louise.chadwick@booktrust.org.uk
Bookstars
News from Bookstart schemes around the country.
Milliband at youngest baby event
David Milliband drops in to a local library in South Tyneside to present books to babies.
On 6 June Foreign Secretary and MP for South Shields, David Miliband, came along and presented our youngest babies to register in the libraries with certificates and packs of books. It was very attended with 39 babies and parents present.
Clare Craig
Bookstart scheme coordinator South Tyneside.
A celebration of Bookstart in Swansea
In May Swansea held a Bookstart Week aimed at promoting and celebrating the Bookstart scheme. Audrey Hunt explains:
It provided some wonderful and memorable events for children and to work closely with our partners. We had storytelling with Cat Weatherill, early years music with Cathy Dew and story, music and movement sessions with Alison Blunt.
On Tuesday after Cat’s storytelling session children could make ‘Rainbow Fish ‘with the Mobile Toy Library. They also brought their ‘playbus’ which was parked outside the library! While children were waiting to get on board, they played with the water, sand and bubbles outside.
On Wednesday, after Cathy Dew’s early years music session, Swansea Language and Play made speckled frog masks with the children and Swansea Family Learning helped the children to make life-size collages of themselves.
On Thursday after Alison Blunt’s story, music and movement session, Swansea Health Visitors helped children to make fruit kebabs and this was also promoted as a NYR event for May.
There were also free workshops on storytelling, early years music and story, music and movement for colleagues throughout the authority and across the borders!
It was a fantastic week for children, families and colleagues and all children went home with a Bookstart bear, a Bookstart balloon and a rhymetime pack.
Bookstart Bear goes down to Newbrook Special School
Newbrook Special School for Hearing Impaired Children welcomed the Bookstart Bear to their ‘Teddy Bear’s Picnic’.
All of the children had invited their own bear to the fun and were thrilled when our big blue cuddly friend made an appearance.
Samantha Goldberg, Family Link Library Worker, and her colleague, Sara Tasker from SALT, shared interactive stories and rhymes with the children and their parents. Both Sara and a member of staff from Newbrook interpreted these into sign language so that everyone could understand and take part. Using percussion instruments they shared laughter and made lots of noise!
The Bookstart Bear gave out lots of cuddles and we were happy to be able to gift Bookstart’s ‘Bookshine’ packs, especially designed for children with a hearing impairment.
Selda San Ridley
Bookstart Coordinator Manchester
So it’s goodbye from us and it’s goodbye from him…
We say another fond farewell to one of our coordinators in the North West. Lynne Craigs worked tirelessly to make the Bookstart scheme in Tameside one of the best in the country and she did it with passion and enthusiasm and tenaciously invented the term ‘partnership working’.
Lynne and her Bookstart team had and will continue to have a clearly focused aim which is to give every child in Tameside a love of books. I had the privilege of being at Lynne’s retirement do very recently where she received a very special email from somebody you may recognise so I will leave it to him to say our final au revoir and leave Lynne to enjoy stotty cakes and some of the finest beaches in England as she retires to the North East of England. Goodbye and thank you Lynne.
Justine Hodgkinson