Dinosaur Poster

Today we set up a display of dinosaur books.  The display has only been up for about an hour and a half at the time of this writing, and we've already had to restock it twice.  Can't argue with that kind of enthusiasm!

One of my co-workers went into our storage closet to look for a dinosaur poster to hang near the display.  We were surprised that there was not much to choose from considering the huge number of posters we keep in storage.  Eventually she did find this gem of a poster buried at the bottom of the drawer:

Note the date at the bottom.  Wow.  I don't want to say how old I was when this poster was new, but I will say that I was very, very small.

Since this was the only dinosaur poster we could find, we decided to simply cut the date off at the bottom.  The rest of the poster is fine as is.  The illustration style isn't too terribly dated, so it works.

The Hungry Games: Catching Fur

This video parody appeared in my Facebook feed this morning:

Enjoy, and may the cookies be ever in your flavor.

STEM for Preschoolers

A few weeks ago (has it really been that long?) I talked a bit about my experience at this year's WLA conference.  Some colleagues and I were able to give a presentation at this conference all about ways to incorporate science into our library programming for preschoolers.  Oftentimes we librarians get so caught up on incorporating early literacy skills into our storytimes that we forget that there are lots of other things that preschoolers could be learning at the same time.  Our goal with this presentation was to share a few ways that we had incorporated STEM concepts (science, technology, engineering, and math) into our own programs and to prove that it really isn't as daunting of a task as you might think.

You don't need to have an impressive science background to teach basic STEM concepts to preschoolers.  At this age children really benefit from being allowed to explore the world around them, make observations and predictions, and ask questions.  In fact, STEM for small ones often looks an awful lot like play!

We can lay a good STEM foundation by working a few basic concepts into our storytimes.  In fact, many of you librarians are probably already doing this without even realizing it!  Have you ever done a storytime that was focused on colors or shapes?  What about the weather, or a certain season?  Have you ever sang a song or done a flannelboard that involved "five little somethings?"  When you do animal storytimes, do you ever talk about the animal (what it eats, where it lives, how big it is, etc.)?  Do you have puzzles or blocks available for kids to play with?  If you answered "yes" to any of these questions then you are already well on your way.

During our presentation we also mentioned a few other activities that we had tried in the hopes of expanding the audience's repertoire a bit.  The first activity, which my supervisor and I use quite often in our storytimes, is a matching game.

The idea is actually pretty simple.  First, we cut lots of like or related shapes, usually using our Ellison Die machine.  Next, we do something to distinguish different "types" of each shape.  In the first example above you can see that we had trucks of several different colors, simply reinforced by writing the appropriate color word on each truck.  In the second example we added a certain number of dots to each heart.  Usually we have four, sometimes five different types or categories for each game.  Magnets are added to the back of each shape.  When it is time for our matching game at storytime, we go around the room and hand each child a shape.  We ask parents to look at the shape with their child and talk about it.  For example, parents might talk to their children about what color truck they have, or they may count how many dots their heart has together.  After everyone has a moment to observe and discuss their shapes, we begin the matching.  We will place one shape on our magnet board and ask the group, "Who has a [shape] (truck, heart, etc.) that looks like this?"  Children who are holding a matching shape are invited to come up to our magnet board and stick their shape up with the others.  We'll count how many of that type of shape there are, make a big deal out of what makes it special (color, number, etc.), and then move on to the next "type" of shape.  This continues until everyone's shapes are on the board.  This activity is great because it incorporates lots of observation and a basic STEM concept like color or number, plus it gives the kids to get up and move around a bit.

Another fun thing to try is using a parachute:

The parachute is great because it gets kids to exercise their gross motor skills.  You can also work some basic math into your parachute use pretty easily!  If you bounce balls/wads of paper/plastic frogs on your parachute you can, of course, count the items as you add them to the mix.  You can also talk about more and less, fast and slow, up and down, and other similar broad concepts that kids need to understand before moving on to what we picture as the math and physics learned in school.

If a librarian is interested in going the extra mile in their programming, I highly recommend looking at this blog, maintained a librarian friend of mine at the Madison Public Library.  MPL is really getting into the idea of creating makerspaces at libraries, and my librarian friend has begun a related program for preschoolers called WonderWorks.  The WonderWorks program delivers a different STEM concept each week and a hands-on activity for the kids to try.

Want to know more about STEM and how to incorporate it into your library's programs?  There's plenty of good information to be found out there, but I recommend starting with this article from last month's School Library Journal.

Book Drop Excitement

Earlier this week we had the third graders from the local elementary school visit the library.  We booktalked several great reads, and then each class was taken on a tour of the library.  During the tour we visited the adult reference desk, the circulation desk, the children's room, and finally the back area of the library where patrons don't usually get to go.  In this area the kids got to see where the magic of circulation happens - how the books are checked in, sorted, and sometimes sent to other libraries.  

For the last stop of the day, I opened up the back room where our bookdrops are located so that the kids could see the slots where they drop their books off from the other side and the bins where the books land.  Generally the book drop is the coolest thing that these kids will see all day.  They're fascinated by how cold it is in this room (the slots are open to the outside, after all), how big the bins are, and they love tilting their heads to see up the slots.  

At the end of the tour, one boy expressed his awe out loud to his friends:

"I got to touch the inside of the library!"

Glad we could make your day, kid.

Swag

I just returned from this year's Wisconsin Library Association (WLA) conference.  This year the conference was held in Green Bay, WI and as always is was incredible.  I sat in on a few good sessions which gave me ideas for new things to try at the library.  I actually got to work with a few other librarians to present a session about science for preschoolers (more on that later).  I had a blast meeting up with librarian friends that I haven't seen in ages.  I went to a lunch with a great presentation by an author/illustrator that I love and got him to sign a book for me.  I even attended a program called Librarians Rock, where I got to kick back, listen to a band, and watch some librarians sing in a Librarian Idol contest.  I was at the conference for less than two days and attended only a fraction of the planned events, but it was still such a great experience.

One of the fun things about a library conference like this is that there's always an exhibit hall where library vendors come to set up booths and talk to librarians about their products.  The vendors range from book sellers to architects to consultants to database gurus.  There's always a lot to looks at and plenty of people who want to try to sell you something.  Fortunately for everyone, the vendors always come up with some good ways to get you to approach their booths and get you to talk to them.  Namely, there's always lots of good swag to take with you!

This year I actually made out like a bandit when it came to all of the goodies.  Two factors made this year's swag better than usual:  1) I made it into the exhibit hall during a time when many other librarians were attending other sessions/meetings so I had most vendors' full attention, 2) I also visited on the very last day that vendors would be exhibiting, which made them desperate to unload all of their extra stuff to whoever would take them.  Take a look at all the stuff I came back with:

This year's haul includes:  Four tote bags, three galleys from a small press, one audiobook, a preliminary list of titles from the CCBC's annual Choices list, a whistle/keychain, a pizza cutter, four pens, a BrushBot (plus a kit to make four more), a Superman bookmark, a rubber bracelet, five buttons, and lots of candy.  Not pictured:  Dozens of fliers and pamphlets advertising various products and services, business cards, and a few packages of promotional bookmarks.

That's a lot of great stuff!  I was a tad stingier this year than I was last year when it came to taking the bags and pens, but some of the other items more than made up for the difference.  The audiobook alone was a huge score in terms of monetary value, given to me by an audiobook supplier who just didn't want to take all of his display items home.  I'm also hugely excited about the BrushBots (available for purchase here), which I'm sure will turn into a great program next summer.  Everything else just seems like good things to have around - especially the chocolate.

Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading, and daydreaming

On Monday author Neil Gaiman made a speech to the Reading Agency in London.  Since then, the speech has been transcribed and shared all around the Internet.  It's actually a beautiful speech, and it explains quite well why reading, and especially why reading for pleasure, is so important for children.  The speech is a bit long, but it's definitely worth it.  Enjoy!

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!

Mother and the Last-Minute Request: A Fable

Today I took a phone call from an irate mother who was desperately looking for a book (Titanic: Coices from the Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson).  Why exactly was this mother so angry?  It was hard to tell through the copious yelling, but it sounded like her son had waited until the last minute to tell her that he needed a book for school.

That was an interesting phone call.  As I'm looking in the catalog to be sure that the book is currently on the shelf and not checked out to a child who prepared for his assignment in advance, all I can hear are phrases like "This is so inconsiderate of you," and "You need to tell me about these things ahead of time, not when I'm trying to get ready for work."  There is very little in the world sadder than listening to a parent berate their child like this in public.  While the kid probably did deserve a good talking too, I truly wish that his mother had waited until after she was finished with the phone call.

Thank goodness we had the book in stock.  I hate to think of what would have happened if we hadn't been able to provide them with the book they needed.  I can only imagine the yelling that news would have spawned.

The moral of this story:  Do not scold your child harshly where strangers can year you.  It makes you look like the villain, not you child.

The second moral:  When on the phone with someone, please move the phone away from your mouth when attempting to have a side conversation with a third party.  Better yet, wait until the phone call is completed to speak to anyone else.  Failure to do so only leads to awkwardness.

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!