Now that I’m about to start back up with the Toddler Storytimes (a week to go and counting…), I’ve been going back to the first lesson plans that I created last year.  And, well, they’re substandard.  That is to say, by the end of last year I’d worked out a nice system for these storytimes, and I’d gotten rather picky about the quality of my felt pieces for the feltboard stories.  These early plans just don’t measure up to the standards that I had set once I got in the flow of the toddler storytimes.  And thinking back, I didn’t even have a feltboard on which to tell feltboard stories at the very beginning of last year.

So I’m kind of starting all over with these early plans.  Reselecting books to use and recommend (I’d made some lousy choices early last year), redoing felt pieces, rewriting the handouts that each child receives at the end of the storytime.  Granted, I’m much more experienced with the whole system now, and thus am able to speed through the preparation process much more quickly, but…I had sort of thought I was done with this when school finished last June. 

If I’m honest with myself, these toddler storytime lesson plans and handouts and materials will never really be finished.  The more I do the storytimes, the better I’ll get at them, and I’ll have to tweak my resources to reflect my increased knowledge and experience.  Which isn’t a bad thing: these storytimes will only be good if I’m truly engaged in them, and I won’t be engaged if I’m just regurgitating a plan I wrote two or five or ten years earlier.  Not to forget that there are great new books being published each year that should be considered for use either as the books that I read to the group or for the quiet time reading between parents and children. 

Just like any job, it’s tempting to get settled into a rut and not put forth the effort that one did at the very beginning.  But that type of work ethic doesn’t do anything for the quality of your job performance, nor does it bring much personal satisfaction for a job well done.  So I’ve come to peace with the reworking of these toddler storytimes.  Actually, I might be enjoying the planning process more this second time around.  And now I think it might be time to make those felt pieces for that first storytime of the year, the “Babies” storytime.