So I finally worked up the courage and the time to implement, Toddler Storytime, a project I have long planned but failed to put into fruition.
It came with the guilty feeling of spending two months and eight days of being totally silent in this blog with no post or update whatsoever. Only my social media pages were peppered with photos of my children and some travel chronicles here and there.
Here’s what truly happened: I got lazy to write in this blog. I work as a journalist and as a writer and to be in a profession which gives me income to pay bills and chip in in buying groceries on top of my backpacking adventures, writing in a blog that is a personal chronicle of my motherhood and womanhood journey became too taxing.
Plus there was the pressure of graduate school; the gravity of which I am still enduring at the time of this writing as I scramble to arrange my schedule and literally look for time to insert reading 154 pages of case studies on whether or not media construct reality in all these craziness and then digest them like I am some intellectual plucked from an Ivy league school.
In between worrying about my thesis proposal defense and blaming myself for not spending more time with my three children, Toddler Storytime was born.
This is not the world’s newest breakthrough.
But it is done all over the U.S. Short 30-minute sessions are often done by librarians in the children’s library and parents come along with their toddlers to sing, dance and read some books.
The program flow is simple and it encourages interaction between parent/guardian and child.
For the record, I am not an early child education expert. I am a mother of three children.
Prior to being Mommy/Nanay to the “mutants,” I have volunteered as a Flores De Mayo teacher when I was 11 years old. I am a volunteer of the Cebu City Public Library (CCPL) since 2007.
I have organized and co-organized storytelling sessions under the Inquirer Read-along Program of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. I am also one of the co-founders of the Basadours, a non-profit organization that started out as a group of volunteer storytellers formed at the CCPL committed to spread the love of reading through storytelling.
Back in 2014, when I was living in Guangzhou, China, I decided to study a Diploma in Language and Literacy Education (DLLE) at the UP Open University. I shelved the initial plan to pursue a Master’s Degree in Development Communication to give way to DLLE so I can learn more about teaching reading to children, second language teaching and making literature-based lesson plans.
It was 2.5 years of testing my limits and of encouraging and pushing myself to believe that I was doing it not just for myself but for three people whom I love so much.
I finished and graduated last June 2016, one of my life’s proudest moments because I do not know how that became possible. I have no idea how I fit in graduate school in between raising twins, getting pregnant again, moving around to at least three countries, giving birth in a foreign country, taking care of toddlers and a baby while I was in a foreign country, battling and winning against depression… the list goes on.
These days, I am on my final two semesters in the Dev Comm master’s track and I hope to work on a communication-related thesis that will shed light on the online sexual exploitation of children. This is a heavy topic but one that we need and must discuss.
I am a journalist by profession but for Toddler Storytime, which will have its pilot program on April 14 (Saturday), I will just be “Nanay Cris.”
For those of you who just started reading this blog, I am married to an incredible Italian American man so that explains why I have children with skin colors different from mine. I teach my children to speak Visayan and I have been trying to get them around to say “Nanay Cris.”
The April 14 session will have two sessions: one at 2 p.m. and the other 3 p.m. We will only have 30-minute sessions because children love to go and play and I personally do not want to force them to listen to stories when they really just want to enjoy touching and smelling books.
Come in your most comfortable attire but no shorts, no sando, no slippers please as the Children’s Corner is still located inside the public library.
You have no idea how excited I am for this. I cannot wait to see all of you on April 14! Please bring your happy selves. Let’s do this in an atmosphere of learning and sharing!
