Vermont Center For The Book

Programs: Vermont center for the book supplements professional development, extends learning into the home, supports literacy in the early grades, and promotes cooperative relationships among the many agencies and programs providing services to children and families. The goal of all this work is to increase children's knowledge, school readiness, success and self-esteem by building the knowledge of parents, educators and librarians. All programs provide these adults with picture books, guides, materials and training to transform reading with children into multidimensional and powerful learning experiences. Vcb offers mother goose cares about the early years, mother goose cares about math and science, mother goose cares about social studies or mother goose cares about math and science/social studies (combo) courses at locations across the state. In addition, vcb offered day-long refresher workshops in math and science to educators who had previously taken a mother goose cares course. All course offerings include training plus books and materials for use with children ages 0-7, depending on the course. All mother goose cares courses are accredited for both undergraduate and graduate credit through the union institute of vermont.

what's the big idea? Was developed by vermont center for the book with funding provided by the national science foundation. All of the what's the big idea? Content (activities, family programs, discovery centers, etc. ) was first tested by 57 librarians from houston, the state of delaware, the clinton-essex-franklin library system in upstate new york and two vermont towns. These four systems provided a mix of librarians from large and small, urban and rural librarians. During the pilot phase of the project these librarians engaged in four conferences focusing on "big" ideas critical to children's acquisition of basic math and science skills and concepts: patterns and relationships, numbers and operations, change over time and geometry and spatial sense. A national advisory panel informed the development of the program. The participating librarians converted what they learned into hundreds of programs in local libraries using project-created informational resources, books, and manipulatives. In addition, they enriched their circulating collections and outreach with what's the big idea? Circulating kits for families.