This afternoon we went on a field trip with another homeschooling family, to one of the Edmonton Public Libraries! We had such a GREAT time and I am sooo pleased we went!! Because there were only four children, they got so much attention and were given goody bags as well as plenty of time behind the scenes to have tries with the book sorting machine and on the book trucks (the carts that they move the books around on).
We were also given an online tour of the EPL website by the librarian and she showed me soooo many online resources that I had never heard of before - designed for teachers and kids - that will be sooo useful for us!!
The lady that showed us around was so enthusiastic and really inspired a love of the library in the children. Abigail had not been too keen about the trip to begin with as she had thought she knew everything there was to know about the library - but she REALLY enjoyed it!! All the kids loved the book sorting machine and had great fun taking turns putting books and dvd's into it and then trying to guess which bin they would end up in - and racing along the line of bins to watch them fall :)
I was especially proud of Sam, who was the first to answer almost every question asked about childrens books/ alphabet etc....I have not pushed him to read until he has been ready for it, and suddenly in the last few months he has been really keen to learn....always writing and loving to sit and read with me, so I was really proud and pleased when he knew the answers and called out the right letters etc...
His favourite book at the moment is The Three Little Pigs, and his favourite part is when the wolf falls into the pot at the end :) Although he DOES love to yell out that the Wolf was 'bad and he was mad'!! and various other well known parts from the story :)
The children are off to the main library downtown with their dad this weekend and next week we have more library plans - including heading back to our own AMAZING library!! We are sooooo lucky to be surrounded by so many wonderful libraries here - they offer so much more than books these days and once you have your library card much of their services/ programs etc are free!! :)
