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.

Star Wars Reads Day 2015

Guys, it's been awhile.  It's not that I haven't had interesting library stories to tell, it's just that I've been too busy to stop and tell them.

But I like to document what I've done, and since I don't believe in reinventing the wheel I think it's important that I contribute to the conversation in case someone else out there might be able to benefit from my experience.  So I'm going to try and start this up again.  Bear with me as I try to get back in the swing of things.



To kick things off, I want to talk a bit about Star Wars Reads Day.  We participated in this awesome national event for the third year in a row, and this was by far our best year yet.  We had huge attendance, which was a bit surprising because the weather was so beautiful and I know we actually lost several families to the pumpkin farm as a result.  Many of the activities were the same ones I had used in years past (balloon lightsabers, fortune Wookies, stick puppets, word search, trivia, memory, and a checklist to keep it all straight), which made planning super easy.  I did revamp an old favorite activity and added two new ones to keep things interesting:

Yoda Ears and Princess Leia Buns 

 
I borrowed this idea from Amy at Catch the Possibilities.  I made my own templates because I wanted to tweak Amy's design and printed the ears and buns off on construction paper.  I also cut two-inch strips of paper that could be fashioned into headbands.  The kids could cut out the ears/buns themselves, and then make headbands.  The Yoda ears were the most popular of the two options, but I was glad to have two different choices for this activity.

Scavenger Hunt

The scavenger hunt has been an old standby for the past few years, and while the kids love it and I love how it gets them to visit all areas of the library, I wanted to change things up a bit.  I borrowed the new format for the hunt from that same blog post that I linked to above and tweaked it just a bit.  I found pictures of eleven different characters and used Publisher to put a letter of the alphabet with each one.  These were cut out, laminated, and hung around the library.  Each kid got a worksheet that listed all of the places where they needed to look to find characters.  When they found the character, they needed to write down the corresponding letter of the alphabet in the appropriate box.  When all were found, they had a message from Master Yoda.  The kids could turn in their completed worksheets and get a bookmark as a prize.

Costumed Characters

This year, thanks to one of our awesome library regulars, we finally were able to get a few awesome members of the local 501st and Rebel Legion to join us for our celebration.  These guys were a big hit!  They spent two full hours in costume hanging out with the kids, taking pictures, watching the kids put on shows with their puppets, and generally just being awesome.  As a bonus, these organizations always advertise through their own outlets where they will be making appearances, so we got a little extra advertising for our event by working with them.  I know of at least two families who came to the library that day specifically because they had seen that the 501st would be there through their Facebook page.

Notes about costuming:

Yes, that's me in the Princess Leia costume.  I like to let my geek flag fly a bit at events like this.  :)

The clone trooper and Sabine (the two characters on the right in the above picture) were my contacts with the 501st and Rebel Legion.  They are parents to one of our long-time library regulars, and dad (the clone trooper) joined up with both organizations last year.  Mom, who is the parent we usually see, just completed her costume and I think might be joining the Rebel Legion in an official capacity soon.  Having people that we know who were already invested in the library as a contact was a huge help!  I was able to talk with our trooper friend before I submitted my request for characters to appear at the library to find out what times work best for people and when other groups were having their events that day to maximize the likelihood that we'd get a good response.  You certainly don't need to have a personal contact like this if you want to try to get the 501st and/or Rebel Legion to make an appearance at your event, but having this personal contact had some nice perks, especially since there are so many local events on Star Wars Reads Day.

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.

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.

Monster Storytime

To get ready for Halloween, this week's storytime was all about monsters!  Here are the books we read:

When a Monster is Born by Sean Taylor, illustrated by Nick Sharratt
"When a monster is born there are two possibilities.  Either it's a faraway-in-the-forests monster, or it's an under-your-bed monster.  If it's a faraway-in-the-forests monster, that's that.  But if it's an under-your-bed monster, there are two possibilities..."  This story continues in this format, always presenting our monster friend with two possibilities.  While not really a Choose Your Own Adventure story, this book does show us that there are always different choices.  Besides, some of the options that the monster has are just plain silly.  The kids were actually enraptured by this book, and they especially liked it when the story came full circle at the end.

If You're a Monster and You Know It by Rebecca and Ed Emberley
The Emberleys has written lots of fun monster stories.  I picked this one from the bunch because it also lends itself very well to some moving and imaginative play as the kids can snort and growl, smack their claws, and twitch their tails just like a monster does as we read.  I always like to make sure that we have at least one stand-up-and-move activity during storytime since I've found that it helps to keep the kids focused, and this book fit the bill perfectly.

Leonardo the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems
This is actually one of my favorite Mo Willems books of all time.  Leonardo is a terrible monster.  Not a scary monster - a terrible monster.  He's no good at scarring anyone!  So he decides to find the biggest scardy-cat kid in the world, a boy named Sam, and scare the tuna salad out of him to make himself feel better.  Needless to say, that doesn't exactly go as planned.  But perhaps Leonardo and Sam can become friends instead.

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
I ended up not having time for this fourth story, but I always think it's a good idea to have an extra in your back pocket just in case.  This classic book could be a quieter, more soothing choice for your group than If You're a Monster if you think that your group needs it.

We also did a few other activities.  Credit for both of these activities belongs to one of my co-workers, who created them.

First, we had to look for Little Monster under the bed.

There are seven beds, each one a different color.  I put each of the beds up on our magnet board, secretly hiding the little monster underneath one of them.  First we counted the beds and talked about what colors they are.  Next I asked the kids to guess in their heads which bed they thought the monster was hiding under.  After given the kids a moment to make their guess, I said the rhyme:  "Little Monster, Little Monster, are you under the _____ bed?"  Fill the blank in with a color, and remove the bed of that color to reveal if the monster is under the bed.  When I did the activity, I purposely removed all but two of the bed before revealing which bed the monster was under to build suspense.  The activity can be repeated as many times as you want, hiding the monster under a different bed each time.


We also told another story using a flannelboard based on Ed Emberley's book Go Away, Big Green Monster.

In the book, die cuts reveal more and more of the monster's face as you turn the pages, and then parts of his face are taken away as the reader tells him to go away.  Felt pieces made it lots of fun to assemble and take apart the face.  Layering felt pieces is obviously a bit different than using die cuts so I did have to re-order just a couple of the pieces to make the flannelboard work easily, but no harm done there.


As always we did a craft to end our storytime.  We made monster masks!

I found a template for a cute monster mask here.  I enlarged the mask just a little bit to make it a better size (I think I zoomed in to 110%) and then printed the enlarged masks on cardstock.  I cut the masks out and cut string to tie the masks in advance, so all the kids had to do was color.  They loved it!  We had lots of scary, growling, stomping monsters at the library after storytime was all finished.

Star Wars Reads Day

On October 5 my library was able to participate in the national Star Wars Reads Day event.  The event at my library was one of hundreds of events taking place all over the country, and one of four events in the local two-county area.  It was lots of fun!  The program was fairly well attended, with an estimated 40 children and their corresponding adults in attendance.

Several stations were set up in different areas of the library, each with a different Star Wars activity to try.  The idea was that kids could wander from activity to activity at their own pace, picking and choosing what they wanted to try.

Three crafts were set up in our Community Room under the supervision of a few teen volunteers.  Generally, the crafts took care of themselves and kids could easily complete them on their own or with a parent's assistance.  The teens were mostly there to be the authority figure in the room and offer assistance if needed.

First, we did some Star Wars origami.

I copied the instructions for Yoda, Darth Vader, and R2-D2 from the Origami Yoda books by Tom Angleberger.  These designs are, in the grand scheme of origami, very easy to follow.  Yoda only requires five easy folds to complete, so even very young children were able to create some origami with a little help. No fancy origami paper required:  Angleberger's designs are all intended to be made with scrap paper, so I simply cut colored computer paper into fourths.  Crayons and markers were set out along with the colored paper so that kids could add details to their creations.


The second craft project was taken from the Star Wars Thumb Doodles book published by Klutz.

I purchased a copy of the book and set it out along with some blank cardstock bookmarks (we had some pre-cut left over from a past program, but you could easily cut your own cardstock too), stamp pads, and markers, and wipes for clean up.  The kids were invited to copy the designs included in the book and create their own bookmarks.  They did a great job!


Finally, kids were invited to make their own lightsabers using twister balloons and toilet paper tubes.  I discovered this project here.

This was a super easy project that, while appealing for all ages, was especially well-suited for our youngest attendees.  It was probably also our most popular activity of the day!  Amazingly enough, we didn't have a single popped balloon outside of the Community Room were the lightsabers were constructed.


Outside of the craft room we had a scavenger hunt throughout the library.

Ten different characters were hidden in plain sight in different areas of the library.  Each child was given a worksheet listing all of the places where they needed to look for a character.  When they found the character, they simply needed to write the name of the character next to the location where it was found.  Some of these names were a tad writing-intensive ("Chewbacca" has a lot of letters!), but very young children all had help from their parents if they needed it and no one complained at all about the writing.  Kids who turned in their scavenger hunt sheets to the Reference Desk were entered into a drawing for a few Star Wars book prizes.


We also had a big book display set up in the Children's Room.  Our smaller programming room adjacent to the Children's Room was set up as a special reading area.

I had been hoarding some of these Star Wars books for awhile in anticipation of the display, so I had lots of books ready to go.  The Darth Vader costume came courtesy of one of my co-workers whose son had dressed as Vader for Halloween the year before.  The reading area was not as well used and I would have preferred (I blame some staffing issues that made it difficult to really inform kids that the reading room was an option), but a decent number of books were checked out on the day of this program.  Good thing - the Star Wars book are the whole point of the event!


Finally, there was also an activity for adults.  Our Reference department put together a trivia contest to challenge fans of the franchise.  While the Reference department had adults in mind when they created the contest, they did allow kids to participate too.  Anyone who wanted to play simply had to answer eleven questions.  Most of these questions were multiple choice, but a handful required you to write in your answer.  The person who answered the most questions correctly won a lovely Star Wars prize pack.

All in all, the program was a great success!  Everyone seemed to have a great time.  We had decent number of kids come to the program in costume, which made it all the more fun.  Tiny Darth Vaders, Clone Troopers, Jedi, and Ewoks always make programs more exciting.  I'm hoping that we can participate in the Star Wars Reads Day event again next year - and hopefully get some of the "pro" costumed characters from the 501st Legion to attend as well!

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!

Library Shouts

Several weeks ago we ordered a book for the children's nonfiction collection called Sneaky Art: Crafty Surprises to Hide in Plain Sight.  Written by Marthe Jocelyn, this book has lots of cute, whimsical crafts that can be pieced together with everyday objects and left behind in certain locations as art. 

As we were paging though the book, one of the projects in particular caught our attention:  Library Shouts.  To do this project, you basically cut out some paper in the shape of a speech bubble and decorate it with words, shapes, stickers, stamps, cutouts...whatever you have on hand.  You then stick the bubble's tail in a book.  The idea is that the speech bubble will draw attention to the book and encourage people to pick it up.

I thought this was a perfect project for my Teen Advisory Group, and my teens agreed.  We changed the format slightly and made bookmarks with a large, oval-shaped bubble at the top.  This shape seemed to provide a bit more stability, plus it fit a bit better in the relatively narrow space between the top of the books and the next shelf.  During this week's TAG group the teens took the bookmarks and went to town decorating them.  We used magazine cutouts (mostly for the sake of mismatched letters), construction paper, markers, and sequins to make our Library Shouts look amazing.  When they were finished I laminated all of the Library Shouts so that they will - hopefully - last a little bit longer.  Then it was just a matter or sticking them inside books that we loved!

We placed all of our Library Shouts in books in the Young Adult area since this is the collection near and dear to the teens' hearts. But theoretically we could use these bookmarks anywhere in the library!

I also was sure to get my library's circulation department on board with this project. My hope is that the circ staff will be able to take the bookmarks when patrons go to check these books out and return them to me so that I can reuse them in other books. I don't expect that we'll be able to keep these Library Shouts forever - eventually they'll get lost or walk away - but we want to be able to use this promotion for as long as possible.

Cats Storytime

This week my preschool storytime was all about one of my favorite animals:  Cats!

The following books were all part of the repertoire for this story.  Depending on the group we read three or four of these stories, selected in the moment to match the audience's mood:

Mama Cat Has Three Kittens by Denise Fleming
While Mama cat and two of her kittens do all of the things that cats like to do (licking their paws, stretching, digging in the sand) the third kitten, Boris, naps.  But when Mama and the other kittens curl up to nap, what does Boris do? 

Kitten's First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes
When Kitten sees the full moon for the first time, she mistakenly thinks that it is a bowl of milk. Then the little kitten sets off to find it. What a night! This is one of my favorite picture books of all time.  I love the black and white illustrations and the classic home/away/home format.

What Will the Fat Cat Sit On? by Jan Thomas
Will the fat cat sit on the cow? What about the chicken or the pig? This silly story got a lot of laughs and is a good excuse to make lots of animal noises.

Kittens! Kittens! Kittens! by Susan Meyers, illustrated by David Walker
Posy by Linda Newbery, illustrated by Catherine Reiner
Both of these books are more sweet depiction of things that cats like to do than they are story.  But both books also have illustrations that are lots of fun to look at.  Kittens has longer, rhyming text while Posy has very few words.  I kept both books on hand and determined which one to used based on the mood of the group.


I've been on a real fingerplay kick lately, so we did this one together:

Four Little Kittens

Four little kittens standing in a row

(extend left fingers upward, palm out)
They nod their heads to the children, so.
(bend fingers forward)
They run to the left, they run to the right,
(wiggle fingers to the left & right)
They stand up and stretch in the bright sunlight.
(stretch fingers slowly)
Along comes a dog who’s in for some fun,
(move right fist slowly toward stretching fingers)
M-e-o-w, see the kittens run.
(run left fingers behind back)

As I was looking around for other songs, rhymes, etc. for this storytime I debated long and hard if we should sing "Soft Kitty." It's a cute song and I can see how it might be a good calming activity, but given it's hilarious appearances on "The Big Bang Thoery" I wasn't sure I could do it with a straight face.

Have you seen Pete the Cat yet?  He's a popular figure these days, so I was excited to have him make an appearance at storytime.  I made a flannelboard to help tell the story of Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons, which was recently awarded a Theodore Seuss Geisel Honor.

To make Pete, I actually photocopied a page from the book and enlarged it until I liked his size, and then cut him out to make a template.  I traced the shape onto blue felt and cut it out.  I then cut out the shape of Pete's shirt using the same (trimmed) template and glued it to Pete's body on only the outside edges.  This allows his shirt to open, so at the end of the story we can find his belly button!

Also, you should know that after you've read this story for awhile the word "button" starts to sound a little funny.  If you'd like to hear the whole book read aloud and hear the tune of Pete's song, look for the song download on the right-hand side of this page.  And because I'm in a video-sharing mood, here's the book trailer:

After all of this cat-related fun, it was time for a craft!  We made cat faces using paper plates and construction paper cutouts.  I pre-cut all of the shapes, so all the kids needed to do was glue the pieces onto the plate and add any desired details with crayons. 

Messy Mondays - Jackson Pollock

We have a new program starting up at the library called Messy Mondays.  Twice per month - on the second and fourth Mondays of the month - we will set up some art supplies and let the kids go to town with creative, mostly open-ended projects.  Our goal is not to make identical crafts, but rather to encourage creativity.  We will also use this time to break out some messier media that parents might be wary of trying out at home or might not have access to - fingerpaints, clay, stamps, etc. 

Credit for this program belongs largely to Mrs. Z, who we are lucky enough to be able to hire to run this program for us.  She plans all of the art projects and runs the program, while library staff gets the supplies, handles sign-in and attendance, publicizes the event, and creates a simple handout for parents to take home.  We also owe lots of thanks to our Friends of the Library group, who sponsors the program and pays for all of our art supplies.

We started the program up this month and have had two sessions.  So far, so good!  Today we celebrated Jackson Pollock's birthday by doing spatter painting in his honor.  Here are the supplies that we used:

We watered down some paint (you don't need much water - just a tiny bit to make the paint flow easily) and then gave the kids two options for splattering.  The kids could get paint on a brush and then tap the brush on a ruler, which would create lots of little splatters.  We also had some squeeze bottles with paint inside that could be gently squeezed, dripped, or even shaken above the paper.

We set the paintings aside to dry and encouraged families to look at books while the dried.  When they returned for their pictures, we matted the pictures on larger black paper to make a "frame."

The picture shown below is a sample created by Mrs. Z:

For anyone who wants to paint like Jackson Pollock but doesn't want to deal with the mess, there's also a great website where you can simulate the process online.  There is also an app available to download from this website for your I-Pad.



Elephant Storytime

This week's storytime was all about elephants!  Did you know that elephants are the largest animal that lives on land?  And that they can use their large ears to fan themselves on hot days?

Here are some of the elephant stories we read:

Peanut by Linas Alsenas
Mildred is very lonely.  But one day she finds a stray puppy.  But is it really a puppy?  Peanut doesn't like to eat dog food, and he doesn't roll over or play fetch.  But he is great at watering Mildred's plants and is an excellent couchwarmer...

When the Elephant Walks by Keiko Kasza
When the elephant walks, he scares the bear.  When the bear runs away, he scares the crocodile.  When the crocodile swims for his life, he scares the wild hog.  The story continues in this fashion until a mouse appears.  Who could possibly be afraid of a mouse?

Elmer by David McKee
All of the elephants in the jungle are gray except for Elmer, who is a patchwork of different colors.  But one day Elmer decides that he is tired of being different and paints himself to look just like the other elephants. 

What to Do if an Elephant Stands on Your Foot by Michelle Robinson, illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds
The story's narrator gives advice on how to avoid encounters with various jungle animals.  But when these instructions aren't heeded encounters with other animals are the result.  This story has a linear progression with lots of different animals just like When the Elephant Walks and is an absolute hoot, but is just a little wordier.  Use the former with more restless groups or if you simply have less time.  If you have time, feel free to use both!



We also did two action rhymes/fingerplays.  I don't remember exactly where I learned this first rhyme, but it was a hit with the kids who were ready to stand up and move a little bit:

An Elephant Goes

An elephant goes

Like this and that.
      (stomp)
He’s terribly big
      (reach high)
And he’s terribly fat.
      (reach wide)
He has no fingers,
      (wiggle fingers)
He has no toes,
      (point to toes)
But goodness gracious
What a nose!
      (wave arm like an elephant's trunk) 

This next fingerplay can be done sitting down, but will still likely get a very enthusiastic response.  It was a hit with my storytime group, anyway!  I found this rhyme on Storytime Katie's blog.  Her version of Elephant Storytime has a lot of fun ideas if you 're looking for more elephant activities.

Up a Hill

Here comes a turtle up a hill,

Creepy, creepy, creepy, creepy.
      (crawl fingers up arm)
Here comes a rabbit up a hill,
Boing, boing, boing, boing.
      (bounce fingers up arm)
Here comes a snake up a hill,
Slither, slither, slither, slither.
     (slide fingers up arm)
Here comes an elephant up a hill,
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
     (clap hand up arm)
Here comes an elephant down a hill.
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
     (clap hand down arm)
CRASH!
     (clap hands loudly)

To finish our storytime we made our own patchwork elephants, just like Elmer.  I found a simple outline of an elephant and printed it out on white paper.  The kids were given glue sticks and lots of cut-up tissue paper to glue onto their elephants.  The craft is simple and requires very little prep, but tissue paper crafts always prove popular at my library and the kids got a kick out of picking out just the right colors to include in their patchwork elephants.