Coping With COVID: Doing In-House Storytimes During a Pandemic

Compiled by Anne Coppell

Kia ora from Aotearoa New Zealand!

In April, I put out a Call for Submissions in the Storytime Solidarity Facebook Group:

Number one piece of advice:

Keep it short.

• Many of these children have NEVER been around other kids, or with strangers, or any out-of-home activity due to Covid.
• Most of the kids haven’t been in Storytime ever before.

Caregivers are bringing kids because it means there is social interaction and social distancing is a lost cause.

I figured with babies and toddlers, it was going to be a lost cause anyway.

Some do make an effort to space themselves apart and voluntarily wear masks? But honestly, the people who are comfortable coming to storytime are the ones who aren’t going to care about social distancing.

We are encouraging distancing (but openly asking our caregivers to work with us on this because we are engaged with leading the program).

We started off by setting out carpet squares roughly six feet apart but that didn’t last long as everyone would move and adjust to sit near friends or up close.

Anything I hand out gets cleaned after use or is meant for them to take home.

We use props, instruments, and reusable craft supplies once – no sharing – and everything is washed/sanitized before it’s used again.

When kids hand them back, I put them in a separate “dirty” bucket or bag. This required us to buy more of everything to make sure we had enough to get through two back-to-back storytimes.

For cleaning – hard items are sanitized using the same spray we use to sanitize our computers every morning. We toss them in a bucket, spray them down, swish them around, then air-dry them on a towel. Soft items are taken home and washed. Our wrist bells are soaked in soap and water first, them sprayed with sanitizing spray.

Anything I hand out gets cleaned after use or is meant for them to take home.

We don’t share instruments or supplies and we wash/disinfect everything after each one.

I have not brought out manipulatives (shakers, scarves or beanbags) but I have been able to read three books, movement songs, and got a bubble machine so I don’t have to blow bubbles with my mouth.

We do not do any extra cleaning most days. If a kid coughs on something, I may hit it with Lysol, but we also say it’s a public space, no different than WalMart, with people touching everything, so if you choose to bring your kids here, you open yourself up to the germs within.

As far as props/materials I make “buckets” of craft supplies, usually enough for 2-4 crafts depending on what’s needed. Bells, scarves, etc. were also handed out in bags/bins as families arrived.

I asked participants to leave their items in the bins to be sanitized after, or I had a large tote up front that they could bring items up (especially things that become a distraction.)

I still do movements, etc. that don’t encourage touching, etc.

For books, we go with larger books with clear, high contrast illustrations for the babies anyway. They can’t take in a lot of fine detail or even all the color especially from a distance even normally so we go for that anyway.

I projected my book onto a screen initially but the process of scanning and cropping each page to fit into a PowerPoint was not worth it and the colors were always off. I do have a document camera but haven’t used that yet.

No matter what I did the kids wouldn’t settle and the parents weren’t much better.

We just move on to Animals Freeze Dance or Shake My Sillies Out. If it stays chaotic we’ll just turn on the bubble machine and dance. Some days it just be like that.