Star Wars Reads Day 2014

October 11 was Star Wars Reads Day, and for the second year I put together a program at the library to celebrate the event.  After getting some experience under my belt with this program last year, it was definitely easier to put everything together this time around.  Several of the activities that we did this year (the scavenger hunt, trivia contest, balloon lightsabers, and thumb doodle bookmarks) were reused or re-adapted from last year's program which made pulling things together a snap.  I did, however add a few activities to the mix to keep things interesting:

Activities Checklist

One thing that I had noticed at last year's program was that while we had lots of kids come into our main programming room to do our craft projects, many of the kids weren't visiting the Children's Room to look at the Star Wars book display.  This was a problem for me because in my mind, the book display was the main reason for having this event in the first place!  To encourage the kids to come into the Children's Room I did two things:  First, I put a few quieter activities in the Children's room to lure them in.  I also created a checklist of all of the activities (including checking out books!) that kids could try.  Kids who tried at least three activities could also drop off their checklists and be entered into a raffle for some Star Wars books.  This system seemed to work out really well.  Kids wandered around the library looking for different activities to try, and we had a lot more books get checked out compared to last year.

Fortune Wookies

A Fortune Wookie was featured in Tom Angelberger's third Origami Yoda book, The Secret of the Fortune Wookie.  This piece of origami is perhaps better known to most of us as a cootie catcher or fortune teller and in this case is styled to resemble the character Chewbacca.  Angelberger provides a printable template with instructions that kids can use to create their own Fortune Wookies.  I put these out along with some scissors and let the kids go to town.

Star Wars Stick Puppets

I found a PDF full of cute Star Wars printables here.  (Note:  When you follow this link, please scroll down to find the links to download the printables.  Don't use the big green "download here" button at the top of the page!  That's an add for something else entirely.)   One of my favorite activities, which I found in the first pack, was a set of printable, stylized Star Wars characters.  These characters could be cut out and then glued onto a craft stick to make an instant puppet.  I had been looking for another craft that would be preschool-friendly, and this project was a perfect fit since the puppets are very simple to make.  I also set up a table and wrapped it with a "skirt" (actually a couple of big black garbage bags) and encouraged kids to use the area as a stage and put on puppet shows once they were finished.  It took a little bit of prodding to get most of the kids to use the puppet stage, but once they warmed up to the idea it worked wonderfully.  It was super cute, and I like that it encouraged a bit of imaginative play and storytelling.

Star Wars Memory

Do you know how the game of Memory works?  Cards are laid face-down in a grid on a table.  Players take turns flipping over two of the cards.  If the cards match, then you get to keep the cards and take another turn.  If the cards do not match, then you flip the cards face-down again and it's the next person's turn.  Play continues until all cards are matched up, and the player with the most matches wins.

The pack of Star Wars printables that I mentioned earlier also contained the printouts needed for the Memory game.  Just print the sheets on cardstock and cut them apart to make your deck.  If you wanted to you could laminate the cards to make them extra durable, but I chose to skip this step and didn't have any problems.  Since I made two sets of cards, I put a different colored sticker on the back of each set to make things easier for me when they inevitably got mixed up.  I just put the cards out on the tables along with some basic instructions and let families go to town.  One thing that I especially liked about this activity was the way it got kids and parents to really interact with each other, rather than the parents just watching their kids have fun.

Star Wars Word Search

I wanted one more simple activity so I created a word search using this website.  There are lots of free online tools like this, but the thing that I especially liked about this one was that the "words" that I wanted to kids to search for could include spaces, allowing me to have the kids search for full character names like "Darth Vader" and "Han Solo."  I just came up with the words that I wanted included in the puzzle, plugged them into the website, and had it generate the word search for me.  I coppied their generated search onto a Publisher document and then added a few images, a heading, and of course the library's name.  Once I settled on this particular puzzle maker it took me all of about 10 minutes to create the word search.  Easy!


As always, Star Wars Reads Day was a great success.  Our total attendance was actually down slightly from last year, a fact that I attribute to the days' unseasonably warm and sunny weather.  Even if the numbers were down, however, we still had a solid turnout and the kids who did attend all had a great time.

Storytime: Silly Stories

Who doesn't love to laugh?  My goal with Silly Stories storytime was to get a few giggles from the crowd.  Mission accomplished.

Here are the books we read:

Bark, George by Jules Ffeifer
George is a puppy.  One day his mother says, "Bark, George."  But George does not bark.  Instead, he says "meow," "quack," "oink," and "moo."  So George's mother takes him to the vet, and the vet pulls out a host of animals from inside of him.  This book always makes the preschoolers crack up.  The little guys love it when they know something isn't quite right, and a dog making the sounds of another animal instead of going "arf" is a perfect example of this kind of silliness.

Silly Sally by Audrey Wood
"Silly Sally went to town, walking backwards upside down."  Silly is right in the title, so you know that this one just has to be good for a laugh.  I especially like the illustrations in this book, and the fact that it's goofy just for the sake of being goofy.

Rhyming Dust Bunnies by Jan Thomas
Four dust bunnies named Ned, Ed, Ted, and Bob always rhyme.  But when Ned, Ed, and Ted list off rhyming words, all Bob can say is, "Look out!"  This book is all about the delivery.  I read Bob's lines with a good sense of sudden panic, which usually inspires giggles.  This book is also a good segue into talking about phonological awareness if you like to incorporate early literacy into your storytimes. 

Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Betsy Lewis
One day the cows find a typewrite in their barn.  They leave a note for Farmer brown demanding electric blankets.  So begins a silly bit of barnyard labor negotiation that will please kids and adults alike. 

Of course, we had to do some silly activities too.  First, we listened to Raffi's song, "Shake My Sillies Out" and wiggled our waggles away right along with him.

Later we sang and acted out the song, "Icky Sticky Bubble Gum":

Icky, icky, sticky, sticky bubble gum,
Bubble gum, bubble gum,
Icky, icky, sticky, sticky bubble gum,
Makes your hands stick to your face!
Then you stretch it, and yank it, and pull it away!

Put hands on your face.
Pretend hands are stuck, then pull them away from your body.
Repeat as many times as desired with different body parts.

I also like to frame this song with a bit of narrative, which not only helps to set the mood but also gets the kids back to their seats and ready to listen when the song is over.  We hold up an imaginary stick of bubble gum, unwrap it, throw away the wrapper, chew the gum, and blow big bubbles.  When the song is over we throw away our bubble gum, turn on the water at the sink, wash our hands with soap and water, turn off the water, and dry our hands on a towel.


Finally we finished off this storytime with a craft.  We made Dust Bunnies (a la Rhyming Dust Bunnies) out of yarn.

My version of this project was adapted from a blog post that I found here.  This craft definitely required some adult help, but it was totally worth a bit of fussiness.  To make the dust bunnies, you need to make a basic pom-pom.  I had the kids wrap the yarn around their own hands 50 times (an opportunity to practice counting big numbers was a nice bonus).  Then with a grown-up's help they would slide the yarn off of their hands, cut the yarn, and then wrap a new length of yarn around the middle of the loop they had just created.  A grown-up would help them tie a nice, tight knot and fluff out the pom-pom.  They then glued some googly eyes and a paper nose to the pom pom to give their dust bunny a face.