Meet the Children's and Youth Services team
Helping your child to read
Resources and services for children
School visits
eResources
Meet the Children's and Youth Services team
The Randwick City Library Service has a great team of people who are particularly focused on services to children. This team is comprised of a Children's and Youth Services Librarian, a Children's assistant and a Youth services officer.
Their expertise is available to support parents, teachers and students by providing quality resources and services to visitors to the Randwick City Library and Information Service.
Helping your child to read
Congratulations on showing a real interest in your child's reading. A love of reading is one of the greatest gifts you can give your child. Reading improves your child's concentration, vocabulary and grammar. It introduces the child to worlds and words, which he or she may not experience in every day life. Sharing the journeys and characters found in a story with your child is a wonderful, bonding experience. It also provides the parent and child with an opportunity to discuss issues raised in the story in a warm and loving environment. If your child has developed a love of reading, then you have a child who will never be alone or bored whenever they have a book in their hand.
When do you start reading to your child? Now. From the moment a child is born, reading aloud to him/her will develop the child's concentration and introduce the child to language structure and vocabulary. Reading regularly will help develop a reading habit. The tone of the parent's voice and the warm closeness of the parent in this sharing environment will help to develop a lifelong love of stories and books.
When do you stop reading to your child? Reading to your child should continue until the child doesn't want you to read to them anymore. It will be when they are starting to read you stories or read stories on their own.
How do you encourage children to read themselves? Here are some points to remember which will assist you in your efforts to encourage your child to read:
- Be a reader yourself and be seen reading at home
- Read regularly
- Have lots of colourful and interesting books around the house at all times
- When you read to your child try to really enjoy the experience
- Interact with your child and the words on the page, but do not do this at the expense of the story.
Resources and services for children
The library provides a large range of resources and services for children. Our Resources include:
- Board book picture books for babies
- First Facts Picture Book Collection - information for preschoolers
- Picture books for children aged 1 to 5 years old
- Picture books for older readers aged 5 to 8 years old
- Picture books in other languages for 1 to 5 years old
- Graded beginner readers for 5 to 6 years old
- Graded intermediate readers for 6 to 7 years old
- Premier's Reading Challenge books
- Junior Fiction novels and non fiction books for ages 6 to 12 years old
- Magazines for children
- Stories on CD
- Compact Discs and DVDs with G and PG ratings
- Toys and Games
- Educational CD Roms for loan
- Kids' website where you can see online what is happening at the library
- Kids PC for use at Bowen and Randwick libraries
- eResources you can access from home with your library card
Our services include:
- Babies love books lapsit sessions for babies under 2 years old
- Babies love books lapsit in Spanish and Turkish
- Ask the expert information sessions throughout the year for parents
- Kids' Club storytime for children aged 1 to 5 years old
- School holiday activities
- Youth Week events
- Children's Book Week events
- Summer Reading Program in the December/January school holidays
- Kids ibranch where children can access online searches such as holds and information requests
- What to Read web page where children can email us their stories and we will upload them to the web page for everyone to enjoy
- Baby change table in toilets
School visits
One of the aims of the public library service is to support and enrich the school library but not to duplicate the resources of schools. It is hoped that our Children and Youth Services Librarian will be able to talk with most School Librarians in the local area throughout the year.
Children and Youth Services would like to take this opportunity also, to invite teachers and their classes to visit their local public library. We would be happy to design a library visit program to meet your needs.
The library visit program could include such sessions as:
- library orientation tours
- library skills sessions
- storytelling and film screening
- book talking sessions.
Times can be arranged to suit your class timetable and can be a one-off visit or weekly, monthly or once a term.