Learn with your child
Learning Together
The Library Service is directing new resources to help family learning. This is aimed initially at parents and carers who need to learn basic reading and numeracy skills and anyone who wants to learn Welsh with a child.
Library support:
At the heart of our project is a plan to lend sets of books (suitable from birth), with special guides to help parents to make the best of storytelling.
Our packs and support will allow anyone to keep one step ahead of their children as they learn and develop.
Welsh sets are already available. English sets are being prepared.
The packs will complement the free Bookstart gifts, but are more varied and will be available earlier and for much longer.
Loan periods for the packs will be tailored to family needs – with loans for up to a year as standard (this is intended to allow parents and carers to balance variety with familiarity).
There are no fines - however late the books are returned and no penalties for bite marks (as long as they are done by the baby!)
Classes
Extra learning aids are readily available to borrowers of the Welsh packs. If there is enough demand the Library Service will organise introductory classes to aid parents learning with their children.
We expect to be able to offer the same type of classes to parents learning English.
Help offered
These offers are open to anyone in the family wishing to learn with a child.
The English programme is equivalent to the Welsh groups in the sense that it is for parents or carers who want to learn with their children.
In the first development phase of English material the Library Service will only distribute English packs to families that need literacy support.
Personal contacts
As well as providing books for family reading and a basic guide to using them, the library will offer a personal contact to every adult borrowing the packs who wants it. This contact will give advice and guidance and prepare material to develop vocabulary and experience. The support material will include graded readers for adults, personalised reading guides and special loans for the parents and carers. The Library will encourage and enable adults to enrol on basic skills courses if they wish to do so.
Contact us
The Library needs the help and support of families, friends, health workers and other organisations in contact with parents of very young children who do not read confidently or well. We especially value referrals that come from partners in the Bookstart programme, but want to promote this service to parents as early as possible so that we can give them the opportunity to re-enforce their learning relationship with their child by starting to read with them as soon as possible.