Overview
Wriggle & Rhyme Active Movement for Early Learning is unique—there’s no evidence of a comparable programme anywhere in the world. Every week, Wriggle & Rhyme sees hundreds of Auckland parents/caregivers bringing their babies and toddlers into the region’s libraries, to share in active movement experiences, set to music and rhymes. Libraries, Councils, and Regional Sports Trusts (RSTs) work together to make it all happen.
Libraries are the ideal venue, providing participants with an accessible, supportive and cost-free environment. People can bring their young ones to any Wriggle & Rhyme sessions they chose, to experience the pleasure and learning of active movement, and learn practical ideas to use at home.
Because there are libraries all over the country, with community buy-in the Wriggle & Rhyme model could potentially be rolled out anywhere, without major investment. With around 60,000 births a year in New Zealand, and with active movement providing core foundation skills for life—there’s certainly good incentive for other regions to follow this successful Auckland initiative.
View Wriggle & Rhyme case study (PDF, 150 Kb)
Background & partners
In 2008, Sport Auckland, Auckland City Libraries and Auckland City Council piloted the Active Movement for Babies project. This was held in 12 community libraries for 18 months. “The thinking in running the pilot programme was to increase the awareness of why movement is important from birth. There were very few programmes that focused on fundamental movement and early literacy skills for under-twos—and with Auckland’s increasing birth rate the need was evident,” explains Alissa Tosswill, Active Movement Advisor for Sport Auckland.
The pilot’s success was shared with other RSTs, Councils, and libraries in the greater Auckland region. This led to the forming of the Active Movement Regional Libraries Project (AMRLP) partners, a group comprising of:
- Sport Auckland, Sport Waitakere, Harbour Sport, Counties Manukau Sport
- Auckland City, Waitakere City, Manukau City, North Shore City, Rodney District, Papakura District
- SPARC.
AMRLP launched Wriggle & Rhyme Active Movement for Early Learning in October 2009. A facilitation group supports the delivery of the programme. This group comprises of:
- Ashlie Gauld, Special Projects Manager at Sport Auckland and Project Manager of the AMRLP
- Four RST Active Movement Advisers
- Six Council library coordinators.
Wriggle & Rhyme’s total operating budget for 2009-2012 is $185,800. Investment by each AMRLP partner reflects the number of libraries in their particular area. Partners’ total investment meets 40 percent of the operating budget, with the remainder covered by Active Communities funding.
The initiative
Wriggle & Rhyme focuses on children from birth to two years old, and their parents/caregivers; although any pre-schoolers are welcome to attend. Sessions are delivered once a week in 50 local libraries across greater Auckland.
All Wriggle & Rhyme sessions are 30 minutes long. Activities start with a welcome song, usually in a combination of English and Te Reo Maori. Sessions are always based on the principles of SPARC’s Active Movement initiative, and involve plenty of singing, rhyming, music and movement. “We encourage librarians to adapt things to suit the local community,” notes Ashlie. For example, in Waitakere where there’s a large Chinese community, Wriggle & Rhyme signage appears in Chinese as well as English.
Sessions use Active Movement resources and activity ideas. Each library has been supplied with a Wriggle & Rhyme kit, including a session planning manual, flip chart with key messages and more; as well as music CDs, balls, scarves, bean bags and other resources.
In the early days, Wriggle & Rhyme gained significant publicity when it was covered by TV3’s discontinued Sunrise programme. But the best promotion has been through the libraries themselves, and then through word of mouth. Posters and bookmarks were produced for each region, which libraries display and distribute. “Some of the libraries have produced more bookmarks themselves,” says Ashlie. Councils also ran some promotion, for example in ratepayers’ newsletters; and each of the RSTs’ and Councils’ web sites has a Wriggle & Rhyme section.
“But what we’ve found is our numbers are so good in many of the libraries, that we are now focusing the promotions on the few areas with low participation,” says Ashlie.
Delivery
Six Activity Leaders train and support the librarians in leading Wriggle & Rhyme. Each library is visited by one of the Activity Leaders once a fortnight, with the Activity Leader helping to take the session. On alternate weeks, the librarians deliver the sessions alone.
The Activity Leaders are contracted by the AMRLP partners and were trained by the RST Active Movement Advisors. They will continue supporting librarians for two years, after which librarians will deliver all of the Wriggle & Rhyme sessions themselves.
Results
“The results have been far beyond our expectations,” says Alissa, who supports the librarians and Activity Leader delivering Wriggle & Rhyme in Auckland City.
In the first term (term 4 2009), there were 7,223 visits to libraries for Wriggle & Rhyme (a parent/caregiver and child counts as one visit). In the second term (term 1 2010), the figure increased to 7,641: totaling 14,864 visits across the 18 weeks. This included over 3600 different parent/caregivers and child. On average, each Wriggle & Rhyme session has 17 participants. Several libraries regularly attract 50 or more participants, which has led to some libraries running extra Wriggle & Rhyme sessions. For example, on Saturday mornings in Epsom library, there are sessions especially for fathers—called Play Dads.
A term 1 2010 survey showed that 27 percent of Wriggle & Rhyme participants were not previously members of the library. Nearly half of these non-members have since joined up. Research also showed that 99 percent of parent/caregivers had the confidence to take the Active Movement skills they’d learned and implement them at home.
Benefits
Active Movement is based on sound research. The brain’s critical period for developing motor skills starts before birth and lasts until around four years old. Developing motor skills and physical activity habits in early childhood helps to establish lifelong physical activity levels. To develop the basic movement skills and confidence they’ll later need to enter sport and recreation, children need varied daily movement experiences—which Wriggle & Rhyme provides.
Building the foundation for early learning/activity. Wriggle & Rhyme paves the way for children to explore and develop basic movement, vision and language skills, building the foundations for higher levels of learning.
Accessible. “Libraries are so accessible. We’ve held focus groups and many people say they wouldn’t have gone to sessions in a community centre. They wouldn’t be able to come and go in the same way. Whereas in a library, it’s flexible. It’s safe and inviting,” says Ashlie.
Creating a social connection. Youngsters learn to interact with others. Parents/caregivers get to meet new friends. Early parenthood can be a tiring and stressful time: Wriggle & Rhyme offers motivation to get out and connect with others in the same situation.
Empowering parents/caregivers. At Wriggle & Rhyme sessions, adults learn why different activities are important to their child’s development, what to do, and which types of equipment and music they can use at home.
Encouraging reading. Taking part in Wriggle & Rhyme encourages eye development, with each session including an eye-fitness activity such as watching bubbles. Children get a very positive start in the library. That rubs off into them enjoying books and becoming active readers.
Building library participation. Wriggle & Rhyme has boosted attendance at many of the libraries’ other children’s programmes such as Storytime. Many Wriggle & Rhyme participants have become new library members.
Making the most of investment. Because the library infrastructure is extremely well established, Wriggle & Rhyme will be fully sustainable after funding for the Activity Leaders has ended. Librarians have vast experience in early childhood learning, so with specific training in active movement, they’re ideally placed to lead Wriggle & Rhyme sessions. By linking to an existing community resource, a great deal of good is being achieved for comparatively little investment.
Supporting ESL learners. The welcoming atmosphere of Wriggle & Rhyme is proving invaluable for those who are learning English as a second language. Activities and songs are mostly performed in English, so parent/caregivers and children can learn together. The adults also get to meet others and build links into the community.
Linking to other community programmes. Wriggle & Rhyme has been picked up by Auckland Teen Parenting units. There’s also an outreach programme to bring Wriggle & Rhyme into the Women’s Auckland Corrections Facility in Manukau—supporting mothers with young children.
Lessons in partnership and sustainability
Ashlie says they’ve learned a number of lessons from Wriggle & Rhyme. Most of these would apply to any collaborative sport or physical activity project involving a number of partners so they’re worth recounting.
Discuss potential impacts with other stakeholders. Before starting a new project it’s a good idea to look at how it could potentially impact on other organisations in the area. This will ensure their services/resources are added to—not duplicated. For example, by discussing Wriggle & Rhyme with Plunket, AMRLP avoided replicating other community services, and gained their endorsement.
Run a pilot. Sport Auckland and Auckland City Libraries piloted the concept before Wriggle & Rhyme was rolled out across Auckland. “Many of the challenges we faced with the pilot were overcome prior to the introduction of the regional project. The pilot meant we could see what worked and adapt things where necessary. That avoided problems making changes across 50 libraries. It made a huge difference to working with so many libraries, because we had a lot of the planning already done,” says Ashlie.
Gain buy-in. At first, a few libraries were a bit resistant to the concept of hosting a physical activity programme. “We had to get them to understand that we were talking about little movements—not turning libraries into gyms! It’s little movements, linked into learning and literacy. We developed a DVD presentation using footage from the pilot programme. That really helped to sell it in to the libraries,” says Ashlie.
Establish a MOU. Agreeing a MOU with all partner organisations at the outset ensures everyone has a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities. “In some cases partners have been referred back to the MoU for clarity or a reminder of what is expected,” says Ashlie.
Think flexible. “When projects are being delivered across diverse ethnic populations it is important to cater for each community’s needs. Don’t assume one-size-fits-all,” says Ashlie. Wriggle & Rhyme sessions provide consistent Active Movement messages—but librarians deliver those messages in ways that are appropriate to the local community.
Offer extra training and support where needed. Just like any group, librarians don’t all have the same skills or experience. To ensure quality Wriggle & Rhyme sessions around diverse locations, the AMRLP partners are working on ongoing training for librarians who could benefit from further support. “Some are not yet fully confident delivering Wriggle & Rhyme sessions alone. But that should change as they gain more experience,” says Ashlie.
Recognise that not every location will achieve the same performance. A few libraries have experienced significantly lower participation numbers. “We believe that’s due to social issues faced by the local communities—the programme is probably not a priority for these parents,” Ashlie says. In these areas some session times have been changed to encourage participants and there has been ongoing promotion and networking with stakeholders. “On the other hand, in some libraries, sessions are so popular we’ve had to look at ways to cater for everyone, such as recommending people try other libraries.”
Track results and get feedback. At their first visit, every new parent/caregiver fills out a sheet with their name and contacts. This helps the AMRLP partners to track numbers at all sessions. Parents/caregivers are also asked to complete a participant evaluation at the end of each term. This helps the partners capture ongoing participation, parent/caregiver knowledge of key messages, and so on. Focus groups have been held in about 10 libraries to gather qualitative information.
Looking ahead
Wriggle & Rhyme was purposely set up to be sustainable. After the Activity Leaders have finished in October 2011, library staff will deliver all sessions. However, if need be, librarians will be able to call on the RST Active Movement Advisors for support.
“Over the next year or so we will identify Library Leaders within each region. These will be librarians who are willing to assist in active movement training for new and up-skilling librarians,” says Ashlie.
The Wriggle & Rhyme model is easily transferable. “The neat thing is, it can be easily molded. We would like to see a transfer of success to all community libraries around New Zealand,” Ashlie says. At May 2010, seven RSTs and one Council have approached the AMRLP partners to find out about the programme. Sport Auckland has developed an information pack for any RST interested in delivering Wriggle & Rhyme and can provide ongoing support.
Contacts and links
To find out more, please contact Ashlie Gauld, Special Projects Manager at Sport Auckland, by calling 09 623 7923 or emailing AshlieG@sportauckland.co.nz.