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.

Pi Day Display

Pi is a pretty magical number.  For those of you who haven't taken a math class recently and/or do not use pi on a regular basis, pi is a number that is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.  Pi is always the same number no matter the size of the circle.  It is a never-ending, non-repeating, very very very long number, usually truncated down to two decimal places:  3.14.

Math geeks in recent years have taken to celebrating Pi Day on March 14 since the date, when written out with numbers, uses the first three numbers found in Pi.  This year's Pi Day was extra special because when we included the year along with the month and date, we could expand Pi by two additional decimal places (3.1415).  Neat!

To celebrate, I did a little display all about Pi in the teen area of the library.  I found lovely printables online and mounted them on construction paper, pinning them to the bulletin boards on our shelves' endcaps. One of these was a super cool infographic with some neat facts about pi.  The other was a printout of pi's digits in much of its glory.

I also wanted to add an interactive element to this display, but didn't want to put out math worksheets because a) we're not a school, and I'm not a math teacher, and b) that's not exactly super exciting or attention-grabbing.  Instead I found a Pi-themed crossword puzzle and put them in a folder for teens to take.  Since voting has been a popular passive program for us, and since eating pie is one of the more popular methods of celebration on Pi Day, I also asked the teens to vote for their favorite kind of pie.  (For the curious, apple pie was the clear winner with 20 votes.)

Wrapped Book Display

My Teen Advisory Group had a great idea for a book display this month.  We wrapped up books and set them out under a decorated Christmas tree.  I made up some stickers that listed the book's genre and affixed the stickers to the books.  People could then take one of the wrapped books and check them out with their library cards.  They wouldn't know anything about the book except for the genre until they took the book home and unwrapped it.

Since my library has RFID, checking out one of these wrapped books is super easy.  The wrapping paper doesn't get in the way of anything with RFID - just place the book on the pad and you're done.  Libraries that scan barcodes for checkout would need to take extra steps to either ensure that the books' barcodes remain visible or to write the barcode number on the wrapped book for manual entry.

December is a slow-ish month at the library with so much else going on, but the display has still been moderately successful.  The teens that I've spoken to who have checked out these books have all been intrigued by the mystery.

Heart Stamping

This week for storytime we got ready to celebrate a special holiday - Valentine's Day.  We read some of my favorite Valentine's Day stories (outlined in this post from a few years ago) and did a sweet rhyme together:

I Have a Little Heart

 I have a little heart, 

             (place hand over heart)
And it goes thump, thump, thump,
             (pat chest three times)
It keeps right on beating,
when I jump, jump, jump
             (jump three times)
I get a special feeling,
when I look at you.
             (point to child)
It makes me want to give you,
A kiss or two.

             (blow kiss)

To finish off storytime, we did a special stamping craft.  I've seen the basic idea for this craft in several places online, but this is the blog post that I pinned to my Pinterest board and referenced as I was getting my supplies together.

For a few weeks before storytime I spent some time gathering toilet paper tubes.  Library staff brought some from home, and we also asked the library's cleaning staff to save any that they came across while cleaning our bathrooms, and we had a very good stock collected in only two weeks time.  Just as is described in the blog post linked to above, I flattened the tubes and shaped them into hearts, using a piece of tape to hold the curved pieces in place.  After storytime we gathered around our craft table and I set out the tubes and pans with four different colors of paint.  The kids could dip the heart-shaped tubes into the paint and use them as a stamp to make heart shapes on their paper.  

 The finished heart collages were all lovely, and the kids had a great time experimenting with the different colors of paint.  There was almost no mess with this project either - the kids were warned to be careful with the paint and adults were on hand to supervise, but I really think that most of the kids were so focused on the task of careful stamping that it never even occurred to them to try and make a mess.

Cookies, Cocoa, and Karaoke

I mentioned in my last post that we had a bit of a Christmas party for teens at the library this week.  The event was called "Cookies, Cocoa, and Karaoke."  Needless to say, the program involved all three of those elements.

I'd had teens asking for a karaoke program for quite some time, and the Christmas season seemed like a good time for this sort of event.  There are many options out there for hosting a karaoke event.  You can rent or purchase a karaoke machine.  There are several video games that have karaoke elements, including "Karaoke Revolution" and "Karaoke Joysound."  Several elements prevented me from using either of these options, however.  Price was an issue was getting a karaoke machine since I just didn't have much money left in my programming budget.  A Wii game, such as the ones listed above, would certainly have been cheaper to purchase and easy to use since we already have a Wii here at the library.  However, I didn't think that any of these games would give us a wide enough selection of songs to choose from.  I also wanted to have Christmas songs available as options for the teens to sing and I could not find a single karaoke game that included Christmas music.

Desperate for a simple solution, I asked around on Facebook and a friend told me that she had once hosted a karaoke event using a program she had found online.  She told me that she had simply hooked her laptop up to a set of speakers and paid a small subscription fee, which gave her access to lots of songs to sing along with.  I looked into several online options like this and eventually selected a program called KaraFun to use for our event.  There is a lot to like about KaraFun and I highly recommend the program to anyone else who is planning their own karaoke event.  The software that KaraFun provides was free to download and very easy to use.  KaraFun also boasts a very large music library of over 17,000 songs, which meant that just about anything that we could think of would be available to sing - including lots of Christmas music.  There was a small subscription fee that had to be paid to allow us to access KaraFun's music library.  I paid $5.99 for a two-day pass, giving me access to the music library for more than enough time for the event.  There is also an option to pay for an ongoing monthly subscription, which would certainly be worthwhile for serious karaoke enthusiasts but was more than we needed for a one-time event.  KaraFun also has an app which can be downloaded onto Apple or Android devices.  In the end I ended up putting the app onto the library's iPad, which gave the teens the freedom to hold the iPad right in front of them to see the lyrics they needed to sing and eliminated the need to set up a more cumbersome table with the laptop.

The KaraFun program worked perfectly for our event.  The teens were pleased with the song selection, and they sang a good mix of contemporary tunes and Christmas classics.  The free software was actually very easy to use and provides users with a surprisingly large range of editing options that allows you to customize the music to your liking.  The feature that I actually enjoyed the most was the ability to adjust the volume in three different areas.  Of course the music's volume could be adjusted.  The impressive part was being able to adjust the volume of the back-up vocals (or turn them off entirely) or turn on and adjust the volume of a lead vocalist.  We ended up turning on the lead vocals but adjusting the volume to make this element fairly quiet.  This gave less-confident singers a little bit of extra guidance as they could follow the lead voice, but keeping the lead vocals quiet made the singer's voice the focal point of the performance.

In the end the equipment that I needed was fairly minimal.  I put the KaraFun app onto the iPad and hooked the iPad up to a large set of speakers.  We also had a wireless microphone hooked up to a different set of speakers, which was perhaps not an ideal sound scenario but was the best system that we could come up with given the equipment at our disposal.  At any rate, none of the teens noticed that the sound was coming from two different places so no harm done.  I had a small book cart available to be used as a stand for the iPad and where the microphone could be set between singers.  Finally, I also set up a laptop to the side of the main stage.  This allowed teen who were waiting for their turn to sing to easily browse the music library and make sure that their songs were available before stepping up to stage to sing.

Of course, there was more to this event than deciding which karaoke program we were going to use!

As the title of this program indicates, there were also cookies and cocoa to be had.  I heated up lots of water in our coffee pot and put out a tub of cocoa mix.  It was really as easy as that.  For the cookies, I actually asked my very enthusiastic Teen Advisory Group if they would be willing to help provide the cookies for this program.  I asked everyone to bring 1-2 dozen cookies to the program.  The three teens from my TAG group who were able to attend complied and there were more than enough cookies to go around.  Asking the teens to bring food is allowed by my library's policies but might not be acceptable at other libraries - be sure to check your policies before trying this.  But the fact that we were able to do this not only meant that I could save some money on snacks, but also that we got to eat some yummy homemade goodies instead of bland store-bought cookies.

The teens also spent quite a bit of time creating Christmas decorations for the party.  We hung up tons of snowflakes and made festive paper chains.  And of course, there was the awesome book tree.   Unfortunately, I neglected to take any pictures of the other decor.  Oops.

In the end I had five teens in attendance for this program.  There was much interest in the program and almost all of the handouts that I had put out were taken.  But this time of year is tricky for a lot of people as schedules fill up quickly and everyone is busy getting ready for the holidays.  I was not too surprised at this fairly low turnout, and I actually wonder if we would have had more success holding this program a week later after Christmas had ended but during the kids' break from school.  The low attendance, however, did have its perks.  We could all be very relaxed about the structure of the program.  I never had to put together a formal waiting list of singers and what songs they wanted to sing, which I may have needed to do with a large crowd.  Instead we could simply use good sense to take turns singing and we could afford to take our time between singers to find the songs we wanted.  A larger audience would certainly have been nice, but there was something to be said for the relaxed nature of a smaller program too.

Fortunately, this was also a very inexpensive program to put together, and an inexpensive program does make one feel better about low attendance.  I only spent about $13 on this program, half of that cost being the rental of the KaraFun music library and the other half being the cost of the cocoa mix.  All other supplies and equipment used were already on hand.  Even if I had needed to purchase cookies to serve for this party, the overall cost would still have been very, very low.

I would certainly plan some version of this karaoke event again for the teens again in a heartbeat.  Now that I know about the features that KaraFun offers and know how to set up the equipment it would actually be a very easy program to plan.  Perhaps we'll see a karaoke event during this year's Summer Library Program...

Star Wars Origami

This is what I did at work not too long ago:

Apologies for the awkward shadows.

Star Wars origami!  From left to right:  Yoda, R2-D2, and Darth Vader.

I've been a bit busy lately planning a program in honor of the second annual Star Wars Reads Day, which will be taking place on Saturday, October 5.  This is a national event with programs taking place across the country.  If you are interested in finding a Star Wars Reads Day program near you, be sure to ask around at our local libraries, bookstores, and convention centers.

The program that I am planning for my library will feature some Star Wars crafts like the origami pictured above, a scavenger hunt, some trivia, and of course a big book display and plenty of space to read.  Watch this space for more info about the program after October 5!

LEGO Christmas Ornaments

I wish that I could take credit for this idea, but unfortunately the real credit belongs to one of my dear co-workers who is in charge of our library's LEGO Club.  This week she asked the LEGO Club participants to each make a small figure that they could then turn into a Christmas ornament.  All it took to turn the figures into ornaments was a small loop of ribbon held between two interlocking bricks.  Voila!

Doesn't our tree look festive?

 

Santa Claus

Candle



This one looks a bit like a ghost, but you can
totally tell from the orange nose and the arms
that it's really a snowman.

Candy Cane.  Several kids made this shape!



Snowflake

Pictured here are some of my favorite creations and they're all showing a holiday/winter theme. But you could easily use any shape at all - a car, a small house, an animal - and hang that from your tree. The real trick here is to keep the figures small and lightweight. If they are too heavy the figures don't hang very well. 



Santa Night Crafts

Our annual Santa Night event at the library took place earlier this week and was a great success. The general format was the same as last year's event, but we had two new craft projects for the kids to try:

Clothspin Rudolph


Glue two clothespins (the solid kind, not the kind with springs) together using wood or Tacky glue. Glue on two small googly eyes and a red puff ball to make Rudolph's face. Voila! This project makes a great ornament as Rudolph's legs fit nicely over the branches of your Christmas tree.

Pipe Cleaner Candy Canes


We cut our pipe cleaners in half to make smaller 3-inch projects, but you can also make larger candy canes with whole pipe cleaners. Twist a red and white pipe cleaner together. When twisting your pipe cleaners together, try your best to twist them evenly so that your candy cane looks neat. Curve the twisted pipe cleaners into a candy cane shape. Tie a length of skinny, fancy ribbon around the stem to make it festive. We also threded our ribbons with a small bell for extra pizzaz. Hang on your Christmas tree, or get creative with other holiday decorating ideas.

Just like last year, we also had lots of coloring sheets available for an easy art project. One little girl even gave one of her finished pictures to Santa to take home to his workshop!

April Fool!

Ah, April Fools Day. A day when you really can't take much of anything that anyone says too seriously. A day where you might need to spend some time looking over your shoulder. And more importantly, a day when Corporate America really flexes its design and marketing muscles as they spoof themselves and/or their industry in gag advertisements.

Today's favorite is from the lovely people at The Horn Book, noted for their bi-monthly journal of book reviews and interesting articles about children's literature. None of the books in this blog post are real, but you have to admit that they're pretty darn funny.

Valentine's Day!

Hooray for Valentine's Day! This is a holiday all about telling the people you care about that you love them - what could be better than that? To show my appreciation to my storytime kids, I made valentines for each of them to take home.



What to show the children in your life that you love them? Read them a story! If you're looking for some holiday inspiration, try one of these Valentine's Day stories:

Love, Ruby Valentine by Laurie Friedman
Ruby Valentine's favorite holiday is - you guessed it - Valentine's Day, and she can't wait for the day to arrive so that she can tell everyone just how much they mean to her. But when her planning leaves Ruby exhausted she accidentally sleeps through the big day. Uh oh! Fortunately, Ruby learns that you don't need a special holiday to tell someone that you love them.

The Day It Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond
Hearts start falling from the sky just before Valentine's Day, and Cornelia Augusta decides that these hearts will make the perfect valentines to send. She decorates each heart differently and knows exactly who each special valentine will go to. This is the perfect story to include with a valentine-making activity as kids make their own special valentines to share.

Arthur's Valentine by Marc Brown
Everyone's favorite aardvark has a secret admirer! Who could it be?

Slugs in Love by Susan Pearson
Marylou and Herbie, two slugs, leave each other sweet love poems every day, but the two have never met. How will these star-crossed lovers find each other? OK, this book isn't exactly a Valentine's Day story, but every day is a good day for love, right?

Santa Night

Last night we had a very special visitor at the library - Santa Claus! This program has been held annually for the past ten years or so, and I was excited to keep the tradition going. This program was a great blend of general holiday fun, stories, and crafts. Here's how it worked:

One of the great features of my library is what we refer to as the Pit Area. Nestled in a nook along the front wall of the library (and surrounded by huge windows!) is a big open space. Normally this space is great for younger kids to play in or older kids to lounge around. The floor is lower down than the rest of the building, with a few steps leading down into the Pit. These steps make great seating while a presenter sits or stands in the big open space.

The kids and their parents gathered on and around the steps, eagerly awaiting the appearance of Santa himself. To start out the program I suggested that the kids all sing a Christmas song with me to call Santa out. And what better song than Jingle Bells! The kids sang, and after one round of the chorus Santa appeared, ringing his own set of magical bells. The kids were thrilled.

Then it was time for Santa to share his favorite story, The Polar Express. The kids listened, enraptured by Santa's stunning tale of Christmas magic.


As a side note, if you have never picked up The Polar Express, you need to do so now. It's really a magical story about the Christmas spirit. The pace of the text is perfect and it's such a good story to share aloud with family close by. Chris Van Allsburg's illustrations are absolutely stunning - it's no wonder that this book was the Caldecott Medal winner in 1986 when the book was published. Track down a copy of this book and share it today with someone that you love.

After the story we invited the kids to visit with Santa. A line quickly formed and most of the kids took the chance to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas. We also had several craft projects available around the Children's Room for kids to work on, either while they waited for their turn to see Santa or after they finished sitting on his lap. We had plenty of coloring sheets, plus three other crafts available.

The first craft was a paper wreath:


For this craft, take one paper plate and cut out the center (we used small snack plates). Punch a hole in the top and tie on a piece of yarn for hanging. Then cut out one-inch squares of crepe paper or tissue paper. I personally prefer the tissue paper as it is a bit easier to manipulate. Crunch up each piece of crepe/tissue paper and glue it onto the plate. Then glue on three small red circles to act as holly berries - you'll probably want some sort of liquid/tacky glue for this. Take home and hang in a festive location.

We also had some festive ornaments:


These were super easy. We were able to cut out these ornament shapes in bulk using our die cut machine, but for home use I'm sure you can find templates with fun shapes. Punch a hole and thread with a small length of yarn for hanging. We gave the kids a few stickers (three stickers were plenty!) and some crayons to decorate the ornament. Perfect for your Christmas tree!

Our last project was a pair of mittens:


Just as with the ornament, we cut out the mittens using a die cut machine. Instead of paper, we used foam (available at your local craft store) for the shapes. We gave the kids each one festive foam shape with adhesive on the back to stick on one mitten. The other we decorated using glitter glue. In our sample we wrote the message "warm wishes," but I saw a lot of kids get creative with their glitter designs. Holes were punched in the mittens and the two were tied together with a length of yarn. I envision these mittens being hung over a doorknob or on a hook for some added fun.

All in all, our Santa Night was a great success! I'm definitely in the holiday spirit now.