Story Place

Story Place (https://www.storyplace.org/) is a free and a virtual experience of going to the library and participating in the same types of activities the library offers at its physical locations. It was launched in 2000 and been utilized to present stories and activities that are compatible with desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. In addition, Story Place includes early literacy information for parents and caregivers.

            Story Place is geared towards preschoolers. It helps children explore and experience activities that can improve their talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing. Talking with children can help them learn new words and information. Singing can help with the development of phonemic awareness, which is an integral part in reading. Reading and writing are two important parts of the success of a child. Lastly, playing help children put their thoughts and actions into words and help them physically understand what is happening around them through their own experience.

Also, it has an array of themes and activities to choose and explore from. The themes include animals, babies, bath time, colors, music, pets, and shapes. When a theme has been selected, pets, for example, the website takes you to different activities that you can do with the students. The activities include an online story that can be read out loud by a teacher or a computerized narrator, an online game activity, a video about pets, a reading list about pets, and a take home activity.

            Also, Story Place also includes a Storytime Calendar that does stories in real time. The activities include toddler, preschool, and family story time. Children and their families are greeted with activities geared to discovering the fun in books, exploring sounds and letters, encouraging language and pre-reading skill developments, supporting early literacy skill development, and help foster a love of books and reading to children.

            Overall, Story Place is a great literacy website that can strongly help preschoolers experience what happens in a library. It was designed thoughtfully, and the navigation of the website is easy and quick to understand. Although the Story Time only happens in their locations in the United States, it is something that our island can also strive to do. Children and their families should be more aware of the different activities that libraries in our island can offer to help them become successful learners of the society. But as we work on that, Story Place is a good starting point to have children experience a virtual library.