The Kaiser family began visiting Herrick District Library in the spring of 2024, around the time their daughter Wrenly turned one. They quickly fell in love with the library and now attend multiple storytimes each week at both locations.
Wrenly is an only child, which initially led her dad, Jim, to bring her to the library in search of socialization opportunities. They started with baby storytimes last year and have since added toddler storytime to their mix of regular events now that Wrenly is over 18 months old. Through library storytimes, Jim and Wrenly have developed friendships with other families.
“It’s great to know some of the other parents and have them know us,” says Jim. Wrenly’s mother works full time and can’t join weekday morning storytimes, so she appreciates the opportunity to bring Wrenly to pajama storytimes on Wednesday evenings. The entire family enjoys attending summer storytimes out in the community when they can, visiting events at both Windmill Island and the Farmer’s Market.
Wrenly was born eight weeks early, which means she reaches some developmental milestones—like language development—a little later than her peers. Jim believes the focus HDL places on early childhood development has helped Wrenly progress. “What we practice in storytime—the rhymes and songs,” Jim says, “are things we also do at home.”
"When I’ve talked to family or friends about our library experience," says Jim, "I like to emphasize that some of Wrenly’s earliest language skills, including several of the first signs she learned, were entirely picked up by her during story time." Jim worked on some basic sign language with Wrenly at home, but only "all done" had been successful. Then one day, out of the blue, she signed “again.” Although it was a sign that Miss Anne and Miss Adrienne used quite intentionally and often during story time, the family hadn’t practiced it at all outside of storytime. All of a sudden, the storytimes that Jim already thought were good for his daughter in an abstract sense made a very real difference. It was from this moment that Wrenly's language development really started to take off.
Recently, in Miss Amanda’s storytime, when talking about colors, Jim thought he heard Wrenly say the word “green.” “I thought I must be mistaken,” Jim says, “since we hadn’t intentionally focused on learning colors at home. But then, in this week’s storytime discussion of colors with Miss Anne, Wrenly said the word ‘purple’!”
Jim credits HDL storytimes with reinforcing learning Wrenly has begun at home, but also with introducing new concepts. “Storytimes are always fun,” he states. “I can tell storytimes at this library are about learning. The staff understand early childhood so well.”
Are there young ones in your life who could benefit from storytimes? View our list of options on our events page.
