You’ve heard the news. We all are officially tasked with social distancing in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus. While our 20 locations might be temporarily closed, we’re still open in many ways to our customers – and we want to challenge and invite you to use our resources to make the most of your time at home!

Get a Library Card

If you’re already the proud owner of a Toledo Lucas County Public Library card, bravo! You can skip this section and go right to the fun and learning. If you don’t yet have a card, get one online and enjoy nearly instant access to all of the many materials and resources below.

Have a Dance Party

Use Freegal to stream free music and help your children get the wiggles out by hosting a dance party. Freegal offers plenty of kid-friendly tunes to rock out to, such as Children’s Chart Toppers, Libraries Rock: Kid-Friendly Songs and the Spongebob Squarepants Collection.

There’s even music to help put baby to sleep! The options are endless, so make your selection and start dancing (or sleeping).

Enjoy a Movie Night

Plan a movie night for the family or your children using hoopla Digital. Hoopla offers more than 500 family films and more than 1,400 movies just for children! Catch up on popular favorites such as Pokémon, My Little Pony and Sesame Street, or watch a family-friendly blockbuster such as Are We There Yet, Ella Enchanted or the Wild Thornberrys.

Hoopla truly offers movies, TV and documentaries for everyone with nearly 100 categories and thousands of streaming options to choose from. In addition, it’s now available as a downloadable channel on Roku.

Talk, Sing, Read, Write, Play – Every Day

Our Ready to Read program is a parent education initiative designed to help families prepare children (birth-preschool) for kindergarten while providing the information and tools needed to build early literacy skills.

One of the actions that the program encourages is for parents to talk, sing, read, write and play with their children in order to help them learn and grow. While especially critical for babies and children before kindergarten, these activities are beneficial at any age.

So while you’re at home, we encourage you to practice these daily!

Keep Your Children Reading

Help your child improve their reading skills through BookFlix, an online tool designed featuring books that kids can choose to read aloud, to themselves or follow along with while the book is narrated. Additionally, through BookFlix, children can watch animated books as well as participate in “puzzlers” featuring word matches, quizzes and more.

The Library also just added TumbleBookLibrary and TumbleMath! TumbleBookLibrary has over 1,100 titles for grades K-6, and includes unique animated, talking picture books, read-along chapter books, National Geographic videos, non-fiction books, playlists, as well as books in Spanish and French. Plus, the collection features Graphic Novels – a student favorite! TumbleMath is the most comprehensive collection of math picture books you will find anywhere.

For those with slightly more advanced readers at home, we also added TeenBookCloud, featuring books for tweens and teens, including tons of anime and graphic novels.

You’ll also find an entire section designated just for children on OverDrive/Libby. Here you’ll find tons to choose from including read-alongs, adventure books, picture books and more.