Library program helps babies' social, literacy skills

Staff report

CANFIELD

Parents and grandparents sit together in the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County Canfield branch’s meeting room, singing along to nursery rhymes. Babies play on the floor on top of a quilt or sit on their parent’s laps as the youth services librarian leads them in song.

“This is the way we wash our face, wash our face, wash our face,” Romie Policy, the librarian leading the program, sings. “This is the way we wash our face early in the morning.”

Each baby has its own brightly colored toy to shake to the rhythm, and the babies and adults clap together as the song ends.

The library offers this program, “Bonding with Babies and Books,” weekly at the different branches: Austintown, 10 a.m. Tuesdays; Boardman, 10 a.m. Tuesdays; Canfield, 10 a.m. Thursdays; and Poland, 10 a.m. Wednesdays.

Policy said the program aims to help the babies learn to socialize with other children and develop early literacy skills. Babies under 23 months can attend. The program typically lasts between 15 and 20 minutes depending on how active the babies are.

This week, 16 parents or grandparents and 18 babies attended the program, many of them regular participants.

“All the rhymes we do have to do with phonological awareness,” said Policy, who has been working for the library for four years. “When you sing songs, it naturally breaks words into syllables, which helps baby learn. That’s how you build early readers.”

Many of the babies are reaching the age where they will begin learning how to talk. Policy says teaching the babies these songs will help them learn to plug sounds together to form words.

Shari Talarico, 60, of Canfield, takes her granddaughter Lilly to “Bonding with Babies and Books” twice a week.

“It’s wonderful,” Talarico said. “It’s unbelievable how much she is learning. I can’t believe how much of a difference I’ve seen in Lilly since we’ve been going to the library.”

Jane Adams, coordinator of the youth program at the Canfield branch, said the program was developed in the early 1990s to benefit the babies and help parents learn how to encourage learning in their child at a young age.

“They’re really little, but their brains are stimulated,” said Adams, who has been working at the library more than 26 years.

Jessica Luckino, 30, of Boardman, brings her 20-month-old daughter, Nora, a few times a month. Luckino enjoys bringing Nora to the program and says it is teaching Nora independence.

Brian Quinn, 36, of Poland brings his 20-month-old daughter, Clara, to the program at least once a week. Quinn often picks out books after the program to get Clara interested in reading.

He added Clara doesn’t often have the opportunity to play with other children, so the library serves as an environment where Clara can learn to interact with others her age.

“This place is nice because there’s all this interactive stuff to play with,” Quinn said. “She gets a chance to play with the other kids. You would normally have to pay for something like this.”