How Often Do You...

usually every two weeks...I need to go today and get a new book....

All three of us - boys and I get books...Bob usually buys his books because he re-reads his...me? usually can only read it once...

Rarely - I am guilty of buying the books the kids want and then donating them when they are finished. I would save money if I went more often! My 6 year old just breezed through three diary of a wimpy kid books in about 4 days. Those were long books! Now what?!

We go every week. We'd go more often if it wasn't such a long drive (about 25 minutes each way.) But we're homeschoolers, so there are always more books that someone realizes they forgot to look for or suddenly needs half way through the week!

We don't usually participate in planned library activities, only because my kids vary so much in age and it's a REALLY big building. Most of the librarians get nervous if I allow my perfectly capable 8-12yos into the stacks, unsupervised, and the younger ones don't have the patience to sit through an activity and then wait for the olders to take care of business.

I love that you're going to the library on a weekly basis. I'm a teacher of little ones (5 yr olds) and encourage my students to visit the library and get their own card. It's so much fun! :) It's also a place where you learn boundaries: no running and using quiet voices. They can participate in self-monitored reading challenges (oh, and don't cheat and lie that they read certain books...), and if they participate in group activities then it's just another way to learn how to work with others. The best part is that it's free, they're are away from TV and video games, plus you're extending their education so that hopefully they won't forget what they've gained at school.

This will be our 3rd week going. Our library has a storytime and then we check out books after. I would have started sooner but didn't know about it until recently. My daughter loves it, she's 2 and my 7 year old son also goes to get books too.

We generally go once a week or once every other week. When we do go, it seems to be for HOURS LOL which may be why I don't go as often as we used to.

We check out books, dvds, she'll color or do some crafts here and there... sometimes she can even get me to join her on the crafts.

Librarian here...Cool, totally hip and modern librarian too. :)
Actually I am a IT systems librarian, but one never-the-less. Unfortunately, there are still some of the stereotypical librarians out there (and they are usually in public libraries). Just ignore them.
Now to answer your question- while I love libraries, working in one makes me a little weary of them in my off-time. I or my mother take my oldest once a week. He picks out his books and we leave. He doesn't usually want to stick around much (because he has to be quiet...LOL)

1-2 times a week depending on if we like the Thursday evening activity that week. We always go once a week and my son (almost 4) picks out 10 books. Sometimes we go on Thursdays for family night if it's an activity my son is interested in.

I take my kids about every two weeks during the summer and just before holiday breaks in the school year (extra/new reading material for the road trips!).
My mom is here with the kids for a few weeks and she is going to take them to movie time and story time (about once a week) but it takes my kiddos a little longer to actually read the books (one is into chapter books, but he only has about 2 hrs a day to read).
Hahaha! I love your description of the librarian - my SIL is a librarian and we tease her all the time about she will be "that" librarian in 20 years!!

Rarely, if ever. I have a serious problem returning books, and the library rarely has the ones I want. I prefer the bookstore. :)

There have been times in my son's life (esp when he was a toddler) we were there 3 or 4 times a week, and I was regularly mistaken as a 'Storytime' employee (I like reading in voices, and would often have a whole garden of kids in front of me). <grin> Only one "bad" experience, and it was a parent who thought I was an employee (because she, come to find, had brought her daughter every week for several weeks to hear me read) and a) I "hadn't been there and hadn't sent notice" the week prior, and b) I "always showed preference to the same little boy" when I was there -aka I had him in my lap or beside me. That she loved the storytime but felt she needed to talk to me first to give me a chance to correct my behavior before speaking to my manager.

That was actually the first time I realized that I was being mistaken for the storytime lady. I just like reading.

Now, though, that we're reading much longer books... we go in about once a month. I'd go in more often, but I would go broke. None of the books I buy are available through the library (I periodically check online when I'm waiting with baited breath to get paid).

Sometimes we go a couple weeks without going and other times we'll go a couple of times in one week. We go and do activities like puzzles and read stories and play with puppets etc. Also my kids LOVE picking out their own movies. My library has nice children's activities which you can sign up for, for free, like art and story hour and so on. We have done those before but with 3 kids ages 3 months, 4 y and 5 y it is not always easy to do! Our library is a 20 min walk or a 2 min car ride, so is easy to do for us.

I used to love going to the library ! I have just gotten out of the habit of going. It's so sad you have "that librarian" ! Ours was the type that if I wasn't in once a week, they were asking where I was and if everything was ok !

I usually go 1-2 times a week. But I request books online and then just pick them up. I do this for my oldest (7 year old) too if there's a particular book he wants. I usually take the kids every couple of weeks to pick out some books. If there is an event that I think my kids will like then I take them to those. My oldest is in a book club that meets monthly.

I say just ignore the librarian and have fun. I think it's great you can take them that often in summer.

Weekly!

We go each week to check out books and we regularly attend the children's activities sponsored by the library. This month we're going to a magic show on the community lawn and next month is "back to school" crafts!

We used to go all the time. But now that we have at least a few thousand books in the house we hardly ever go. I like to buy my books for my computer or for my sony digital reader. My husband buys his books. We had been using the library again recently and our library keeps losing books and saying we are doing it. We'll bring a whole stack of books back and they'll insist one or two are not in the pile when we knew they were and one time my mom checked out 1 book and the lady behind her had about 30 of them. They put them on my mothers card!! Then the other lady didn't bring any of them back. That day that I found that out and stood there talking with them about that I decided to run home and get the book I had been reading. I went home SPECIFICALLY to get the book and take it to them. They have charged that book back to my account.

I would have to say that we won't be going to a library much if at all because this library system is huge in our area and I've lost faith in them.

It depends, the activities that are "cool" enough for 14 and 16 year olds are few and far between, but we did a couple last year.
We go about every two weeks in the summer.
During the school year we go every week as the piano teacher lives across the street from the library.
We have an "old school" librarian too, I just avoid her. We can check out our own books at the kiosks set up throughout the library.

We go weeklyd. We do the story time and craft provided. I suck at crafts and have very little motivation to do them at home. At least this way the kids can do them at the library! We LOVE the library.

At preschool this last year the library ladies came to the school to talk about the library and the kids getting a library card. My son kept telling his "friends" that he knew the ladies. no one believed him. Finally he went up to the one library lady and said "Miss Kim.. my friends do not believe me that I know you". Miss Kim was very nice and got the whole classes attention and she let everyone know what a special kid my son was and that she knows him well b/c he visits her weekly. After that all the kids thought my son was sooo cool for knowing the library ladies.

We go every week. Our library also has a reading program where my daughter gets a prize for every two hours she reads, and they donate to feeding charity. And They do a free craft once a week. I would not worry about the "scary" librarian :) if this is a free activitie that your kids enjoy then don't let an old sour librarian keep you from that. Also, if this program is having your kids read in the summer then keep going!! I know my daughter, who picked up reading pretty quickly/easily, she still doesn't enjoy reading but she prefers being read to, she is 6. But this reading program gets her to read for a reason other than Mom forcing her ha ha!

We go once a week. My kids love our library and all it has to offer. I also use it, mainly to check out documentaries.

When my kids were little they had libraries in the schools and they went every week. It was fine for them and easy for me. I didnt really get into the habit of going to our city library with them. Then our library closed down due to lack of funds and this whole town lived without one for about 10 years. Then the funds were available and they built a new library. I have never been to the new one. My daughter takes her daughter every few weeks. Im more than willing to read the books with her, and I have been a childrens book club member with both my kids and grand daughter. We have stacks of books here and I dont have to worry about returning them on time! Years ago when my kids had grown up and the grand daughter was not even in the picture,there was a big article in the paper about a new elementary school here in town. They had built a library, but ran out of money and were not going to be able to stock it with books the first school year. My kids both asked if we could donate their old books from the clubs they had been in since birth. We ended up donating 380 books and the library was able to start that first year letting kids check out and take home books. It was so cool to be able to do that. A few years ago a good friend's son in law became a teacher and his first year was at that school. He told me they still have a lot of those books and my kids names are still on the inside cover where I used to write it when the new books came in the mail. So I guess I havent missed the library trips. But Im really glad to see so many of you do take your kids.

We don't go that often.
We have SO many books at home, of all types and for all ages, the kids always have books to read, and which they have not even gone through yet.
We have a 'library' at home. Because we have so many books.

But reading time at libraries are fun. The kids like it. Or we do the bookstore type reading time. The kids like that better.

I was going a lot there for a while but my gal is just 4 and it was too quiet for her!! Ha ha. Free is lovely! Can't beat it!

I have NEVER taken my kids to the library! I guess mostly because I buy them tons of books that we never have to worry about losing or not returning. In fact, I just moved one of the bookcases in the hall between their rooms and put ALL their books in it so now they have their own "library" to share between them. I got rid of all their "beginner" books and put all their new books in there. So now they don't have any books in their room, they are all in the hall. They do go to the school library and check out books so they are not completely out of the library! Maybe we should go check it out. I hear things have changed in the last 30+ years that I've been to a library! =)

To SLM~ I also have a sony eReader...does your library system offer books for it? Ours has a vendor ("Overdrive") finally paid for thru grants or?? so I check books out onto my eReader for 3 weeks at a time. When that time expires they just magically dissapear off my reader! I love it!

But I use the library like crazy for myself and my home daycare. I go online and reserve books, kids books for my daycare curricula, I reserve DVD's of all sorts (and sometimes its many months later my name comes up on the list), I also reserve music CD's. I love being able to get the emails in my inbox...zip up there (its 5 minutes away and good driving practice for my teenager after I am done working)...and it just takes me a few minutes to get my reserved items.

I like alot of older BBC-America type historical drama mini series pieces. Many I have reserved thru the library and make for great sunday, lazy in my PJ's watching occasionally (many are mini series and 6-8 hours long!)

When I was a nanny we did the library every week for story time and book checking-out. That was most of 8 years while I worked for that family (and for my daughter , till she was 3 years old). Around here tho,most of the kids activities are during the day, so unless you have that sort of free daytine schedule, you miss out. I always hated that for my child after I started my home childcare.

Library is great tho! I just picked up the "Diary of a wimpy kid--Rodrick Rules" Dvd the other day! I will watch most anything!

I am a SAHM of a 3 yr old. We go to the library once, sometimes twice a week. This summer, my son's been in swim class a lot, so we haven't gone to all of the programs that they have. They're always super-crowded, so I wasn't thrilled with going anyways. We also do a reading progam this summer where my son wins prizes for every 10 books we read with him. (I like the "Read to Feed" idea. I will recommend that to my local library. PM me with more info if you can.

We do check out books, but lately, we've been to the library to check out movies, since we don't have tv right now. (btw - checked out The Brave Little Toaster. Loved it! Thanks!). I have watched (thanks to my library) some pretty good new movies like True Grit, Just Go With It, The Tourist, others I can't think of right now. My son loves to check out Marmaduke and Wall-E. He gets one movie each week too (but we're doing better about not watching tv each meal. Just breakfast for the past week!).

Good luck with that 'scary librarian.' Sounds awful.