T-Shirt Tote Bags

Our most recent Maker program was one that I've had on my radar for ages now:  Making tote bags out of old t-shirts.  I'd seen versions of this project floating around Pinterest for ages and I heard a little buzz about a library or two that did this project at a conference last year, and I decided that it was finally time to give this one a go myself.

If you were to use Google or Pinterest to search for "t-shirt bags" you would easily find TONS of tutorials.  Some versions of this project are more involved than others in terms of finishing.  There is even a way to do this as a no-sew project, which is great if you do not have access to a sewing machine and don't have the ambition to do hand sewing with needle and thread.  The tutorial that I decided to use as a basis for this program was this one.  I liked that the finishing was pretty minimal, which would make the project easy for my teens and tweens to complete in a short amount of time.  But it also included one sewn seam on the bottom, which I appreciated.

In my advertising for this event I tried to make it clear that all participants needed to bring their own shirt to use for this project.  This makes the finished product much more personal for everyone, plus it saves me the trouble of needing to procure the shirts.  I sent a reminder email to everyone who had signed up out a few days before the program and asked that anyone who wouldn't be able to bring their own shirt contact me as soon as possible so that we could work something out.  No one contacted me, and everyone who attended (4 teens and 3 tweens) brought a shirt with them.

To do the project, we pretty much followed the instructions in the tutorial exactly as written.  I gave everyone a pair of scissors to cut the sleeves and neck of the shirts.  Fabric scissors definitely would have been ideal since they are sharper and easier to use on fabric, but we made do with the regular scissors that we had on hand.  Only one participant had trouble with the cutting but was able to get it done with a little help.

I brought in my own sewing machine from home and showed everyone the basics of how to use it.  Each participant was able to sit at the machine and stitch the bottom hem themselves.  I was impressed that about half of my participants had done some basic sewing on a machine before, and these people caught on especially quickly.  Even those who had never seen a machine before figured everything out pretty easily with some instruction.  Sewing a straight seam is actually not terribly difficult or time consuming even for a beginner, and it was very exciting for everyone - even those who had used a sewing machine before - to use this piece of equipment.  Because sewing one seam is pretty quick one machine was enough to go around for my small group, but someone with a much larger group might want to try to get a second machine for people to use.

As I instructed everyone, I also pointed out a few areas where a more professional seamstress might work extra hard to make the finished product really nice (sewing finishing hems along the bag's opening and handles, for example).  But we also talked about how we weren't professionals and why skipping some of these steps was okay for our purposes.  The teens and tweens seemed to think this was interesting and I'm glad that I was able to bring in this brief "real world" application to this simple DIY project.

For the most part, everyone finished their t-shirt bags in about 15 minutes.  Most of the participants used their bags to carry books home after the program.  I call that a success, and I would definitely consider running this program again in the future.

St. Patrick's Day Storytime

I was getting a bit tired of my old storytime stand-bys, so I decided to shake things up by making this week's storytime all about a holiday that I'd never shared with this crowd before:  St. Patrick's Day!  While the first things that come to many people's minds when they think of this holiday are green beer and "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" buttons, there are a lot of really nice kid-friendly symbols that can easily become the focus of this storytime.

Here are the books that I read:

Green by Laura Vacarro Seeger
This books is sparse on text, but the illustrations are full of great things to talk about.  Each two-page spread shows a different shade of green, as well as die-cut shapes that take new form as you turn the page.  As a group we had so much fun looking at and talking about the illustrations that this sparse 36-word book was easily our longest read of the day.

The Story of the Leprechaun by Katherine Tegen
A miserly leprechaun shoemaker is captured and must therefore grant a man three wishes.  Of course, one of these wishes is to know the location of the leprechaun's pot of gold.  The leprechaun tells him, but of course is able to pull off a sneaky trick to keep his gold well hidden.  Many St. Patrick's Day or leprechaun books out there are a bit too long for my storytime crowd, but this book was a good fit for my preschoolers.  Just enough mischief to keep things interesting, and the kids' giggles when she saw the leprechaun's trick made it more than worth the effort.

Good Luck Bear by Greg Foley
One day Bear finds a clover.  His friend Mouse tells him that if he can find a four-leaf clover, then he will have good luck.  Bear spends all day searching with no luck and his other friends are not very encouraging.  Just as Bear fears that he will be unlucky forever, Mouse returns with a surprise for his friend.  I chose this particular book because it does a good job of introducing the shamrock symbol in simple terms.  It's also a fairly quick read, which was welcome by the end of this storytime since our first two books took so long to get through.

Duckie's Rainbow by Frances Berry
Duckie walks home and sees many colors.  Soon purple clouds roll in and it begins to rain.  But the curved pages of this book reveal a beautiful rainbow.  I did not end up needing to read this story and instead talked about rainbows using the flannelboard discussed below, but it would be a great choice for younger or more fidgety groups if you need to substitute a shorter, more simple story.


I also incorporated a few fun rhymes into this storytime.  The first was the action song, "Dance, Leprechaun, Dance."  I didn't come up with this myself, but sadly can't remember what my source for this song was. 

Dance, Dance, Leprechaun Dance

Tune:  “Skip to My Lou”

Dance, dance, leprechaun dance,

Dance, dance, leprechaun dance,

Dance, dance, leprechaun dance,

Do a dance for me!

Bow...

Clap...

Jump…

Search for gold…

Sit...

Suit actions to words

This song was a lot of fun, and I was amused to see that none of the kids really had any idea how a leprechaun should dance without prompting.  I just did the first easy arm-flailing, knee-wiggling dance I could come up with the and kids more or less copied what I did.

We also got out my "Rainbow in a Pot" flannelboard, which was a great way for us to talk about rainbows in a bit more detail after seeing one briefly in The Story of the Leprechaun.  I discuss the flannelboard and the song that goes with it in more detail in this post.

To conclude this storytime we did a very simple art project that was surprisingly full of early learning opportunities.  I cut out lots of dark green hearts using our die-cut machine and gave four to each child.  They were able to glue them onto a lighter green sheet of paper to make a shamrock.  Since the paper was so big I also gave them crayons and let them draw whatever they wanted in the margins.  Many kids chose to draw other symbols of the St. Patrick's Day holiday that we had talked about like rainbows, pots of gold, and leprechauns, but they could choose to draw whatever they wanted and we saw all kinds of fun choices.  I loved the idea of giving the kids a chance to do some free drawing so that they could really get creative and personalize their artwork.  Drawing is also a great skill for kids to work on as these motions are very similar to the motions they will use when they eventually learn to write.  The two shades of green paper were also a subtle nod to the book Green that we had read.

Fortune Tellers

This month's passive program in the Teen area of the library is reading-focused.  I'm totally on board any time we can tie a program or activity in with our collection and encourage people to read and/or check out books because in the end, the library's collection is one of my highest priorities.

Do you remember Fortune Tellers?  Or perhaps you knew them better as Cootie Catchers?  These folded pieces of paper had the mystical power to answer all of your deepest childhood questions.  Did Jimmy have a crush on you?  Should you wear your blue shirt to Jenny's birthday party?  Would you mom mind if you ate a few more cookies?  Just make a few easy choices, open and close the Fortune Teller appropriately, and BAM!  A virtually instant answer from the universe, offering guidance and wisdom during troubling times.

I decided to take this trope and use it as a way to help bored teens pick their next read.  Teens can pick up a Fortune Teller (I made three different ones to pick from), make their choices, and then find out exactly which genre of book they are destined to try today.  If they don't like the answer that the Fortune Teller gives them (because hey, sometimes the universe gets it wrong), they of course are more than welcome to try again.

I put the Fortune Tellers on top of one of our book displays, along with a selection of books that fell into some of these genres.  Amazingly enough, with 24 different book fortunes, some of which are as broad as, "Read a book by a female author," literally anything at all from the collection goes.  Sneaky, right?  I used this as an opportunity to display books that are under-circulated and that need a little extra help getting into people's hands.

There is absolutely no way to track how many people are using the Fortune Tellers, but I'm really okay with that.  In a halfhearted attempt at more concrete usage-tracking I did put out a few slips of paper that people could fill out telling me what their fortune was and which book they selected, but I honestly don't really expect the teens to bother with this without further motivation.  I have been keeping an eye on display and have seen that the fortune tellers have moved a bit and that some of the books on the display have been checked out, so I suspect that it's seeing at least a little traffic.

In the interest of full disclosure:  I did not come up with this idea all on my own.  I found an image on Pinterest that used this idea.  However, I am unable to link to the original source as it has since been taken down or moved, and my saved link on Pinterest is no longer valid.  So big thanks to whoever it was that originally came up with the idea!

Can You Have Too Many Books?

I'm part of a local mommy's group on Facebook.  I'm not super active there, but there's a question that pops up fairly regularly that I always like to put on my librarian hat to answer:



Q:  What is a thoughtful, fairly inexpensive gift that I can get for X Child who is X Years Old?  S/he already has everything, so I'm looking for a really interesting/unique idea.

My answer is always something along these lines:

A:  When in doubt, I love to give books!  You truly cannot have too many of them, you have lots of options to choose from (but you also really can't choose wrong), plus they promote learning / early literacy / parent-child bonding.  Board books and paperback  books are also fairly inexpensive, most costing under $10.  You really can't go wrong!



Occasionally someone will respond to my comment with the following counter-arguments.  While these are fair concerns, I think that it's really important for me to provide a few counter-counter-arguments.
 
I usually present this first answer in much shorter form with a more focused information depending on the situation, but here on this blog it makes sense to elaborate a bit more deeply:



CA:  But they already have SO MANY BOOKS!  I don't wan to give them more and add to the clutter.

CCA:  Oh, honey.  That's sweet of you to care about the trouble of having books strewn all over the living room floor.  And I get it.  I also have a very young child who owns a fairly obscene number of books.  And yes, I do occasionally mutter to myself about the clutter.  But really and truly:  You can't have too many books!  

I have observed, both from my own experience and the experiences of friends/colleagues as well as documented research (links below), that the more books a child has in their house, the more they read and the greater their future successes will likely be.  The books will not sit stagnant on the shelf.  They will be read if they are in the house and easily accessible.  It might seem like they have "enough" or "too many" books on the outside, but I can assure you that if you're seeing the books well enough to make this observation, you can be confident that they're being read.  A few more will only help this child love reading more, and that to me is more than worth a little bit of clutter.

Is the child very young and still being read to?  If so, I can all but guarantee that Mom and Dad are bored to death with most of the books already in their house, no matter how many they have and how wonderful they are.  A personal anecdote to illustrate this:  My 1.5-year-old daughter has about 75 board books.  It's a pretty ridiculous number; more than most people have.  But it only takes about two minutes to get through each one and because we have lots of books that are easily accessible, my daughter loves reading them and we go through a big stack every day.  It doesn't take very long for us to start repeating books, even with this large number to start with, and when we start repeating too often Mom and Dad get bored. Something new and clean and fresh will always be a welcome addition to the routine.

Is the child older?  Are they voracious readers?  If so, the same rule applies; The more, the better.  The books that you give will get read.  Are they more reluctant readers?  Then it's all the more important to give books, perhaps in a different genre or style than they are used to, in the hopes that you might help this child discover something new and exciting.  Most reluctant readers are reluctant simply because they haven't found That Book that sparks something with them.  They need a little nudge to find That Book.  They will only find That Book if people give them books.

Finally, the one or two books that you give are also not going to really going to add that much more clutter if they already have tons of books.  Mom and Dad find a way to make room on the shelf or in the storage basket.  They will continue to do so until the bookshelf collapses, at which point they will either do some housekeeping or buy an extra bookshelf.  Either way, it's not your job to worry about the clutter.  It's your job as the gift-giver to give a really nice gift, and books are great gifts.

A few links to interesting articles on the subject of having books in the home, both of which relate to the same study:
Pacific Standard
Education World



CA:  I just gave this child books at his/her last birthday / Christmas / Easter / other occasion.  Wasn't that enough?  I'd hate to be repetitive.

CCA:  Again, don't stress out about this.  As long as you give a different book, it won't be the exact same thing because each book provides a different reading experience.

Did you give them a book about dinosaurs at the last gift giving occasion?  Then give a book about colors or farm animals or outer space this time.  Variety is always good.

If you think an older child would be up to it, try giving books from a different genre than their usual to mix things up a bit, for example, giving something historical or a mystery to an avid reader of fantasy.  Alternatively, introduce them to a new, up-and-coming author in their favorite genre, or an older, classic series that they may not be aware of.

Don't forget about nonfiction too!  Has the child recently expressed an interest in anything at all - maybe sports, current events, opossums, the latest video game, or science?  I can all but guarantee that there's a book about that.  Find one to give as your gift to help the child further explore their new passion.

Most kids, especially those who love reading, will be happy to have more to read and explore.  More reluctant readers will hopefully be drawn to new subject matter.  The more books, the better!