Storytime superheroes

One World, Many Stories

2011-06-06T15:25:00.000-07:00

This week I've been running around to all the classes in our elementary and middle schools to talk about the summer reading program. Between all the classes, I think I've talked to over 500 kids. Add that to all the preschools and daycares I covered in the last couple weeks, and I think I've seen just about every kid under the age of 14 that lives in our area at least once this month.

We are doing the theme "One World, Many Stories" for our summer reading program this year. Cool storytimes, fun prizes, and all that usual stuff (check it out on our website for more details). But what I'm really excited about is that we're working to put together a book of real-life stories from members of our community - both adults and kids. Got a great story? Please send it in to me!

We did an abbreviated storytime this week, since I talked to the kids here about the summer reading program as well. I did tell them a true story about myself as a child (involving a couple toads and the gas tank of a lawnmower) and then did a few stories from around the world.

Books:

Everywhere the Cow Says "Moo!" by Ellen Slusky Weinstein

A fun book that I've done before where we learn what cats, dogs, frogs, and other animals say in Spanish, French, and Japanese. After each animal, I let the kids repeat the animal noise, and we all join in on "And everywhere, the cow says Moo!"

Similar, but not quite as fun are the books Yum! Yuck! A Foldout Book of People Sounds and Mung-Mung: A foldout Book of Animal Sounds both by Linda Sue Park. It's interesting how the same concept of different sounds in each language can be such a hit or miss. The kids I read these books to didn't seem to "get" the sounds were in different languages, and they were presented on the page in such a way that it didn't lend itself to the "kid chorus" like the Weinstein book.

I also wanted to do a little storytelling, so in addition to my own story, I read a few selections from Three Minute Tales: Stories from around the World To Tell When the Time is Short by Margaret Read MacDonald. We didn't have this at our library, so I got it through ILL (I just love that service). There are great stories in here for all ages, all of them perfect for those with short-attention spans like my toddlers & preschoolers, or more thoughtful tales that just happen to be shorter. I need to get a copy of this book for myself.

Craft:

We told stories during craft time - I let the kids write down or tell me stories for our book if they wanted to do it. Otherwise, I put down paper on the tables and let them draw whatever they wanted to. Always nice to have an very open-ended activity once in a while.

This theme was used the week of May 30, 2011.

Next week we'll start our world tour for summer reading, starting with Norway.

Airplanes

2010-12-10T12:45:00.000-08:00

I like doing storytimes on vehicles because there are so many little boys and girls that just love anything that moves. So I decided on airplanes this week. I started by lining up chairs in rows in our storytime area and we all pretended to take a flight (to Florida, of course. Where else would we go from snowy Minnesota?)

Books:

That's Not My Plane by Fiona Watt
I love the "That's Not My..." series. Even older kids and adults like being able to interact with the books by feeling the scratchy propeller, the shiny headlights, the rough seat. And of course I always let the kids feel the pages as I'm reading it. This slows me down, so this time I was smart and had two copies of the same book - one in each hand, letting twice as many kids touch at the same time.

Redbird by Patrick Fort
Redbird was a neat book I found that is in both braille and printed text and it has raised bumps under the elements of each picture as well. The story, frankly, is not good and not much of a story. But I read it anyway to the kids the opportunity to touch the bumps on the book and imagine what reading would be like for those who cannot see.

Other books I read this week were:
Airplanes!: Soaring! Diving! Turning! by Patricia Hubbell

Amazing Airplanes by Tony Mitton
I Love Planes! by Philemon Sturges

Activity:

We got to do something we've been doing a lot at my house lately: make paper airplanes! I gave the kids markers and crayons and instructed them to decorate both sides of a blank piece of paper. Then I folded it into a basic plane (my standby is the dart) and had a space set aside for them to fly their creations. For instructions on how to fold the dart, and other great airplane designs, try the site www.amazingpaperairplanes.com.

This theme was used the week of 12/6/10.
Next week we'll be talking about pancakes.

Big, Bigger, Biggest

2010-12-03T12:06:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you, but my own kids have had trouble with size comparisons. Or at least they did early on. They've got it down by now. Seems easy: "A is bigger than B, therefore B is smaller than A". "This jacket is too big for me, but too small for mama." But inevitably they'd say the jacket was too small for me and too big for them, or get it mixed up somehow. So I decided to do a storytime on that. I brought a number of items from my house, each in 3 sizes. I brought spoons (teaspoon, soup spoon, serving spoon), whisks (small, medium, large), jeans (infant, child, and daddy's), and a few other things. The pants were the biggest hit, of course. But for each we figure out which was the biggest, which the smallest, and which in the middle.

Books:

I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean by Kevin Sherry
The story of a giant squid (not an octopus, a squid) that goes around stating how he's bigger than this fish, he's bigger than that jellyfish, and then of course an enormous whale swallows him. But then he finds he's the biggest thing inside the whale... It's a good book and funny for the kids, I just wish they wouldn't just use "I'm bigger than..." all the time. An occasional "This ____ is smaller than me" would have been nice, since that's what I was working on with the kids this week.

Big, Bigger, Biggest by Nancy Coffelt
I read this book two different ways depending on the age of the kids. For the older ones, I read it how it was written - there are 3 animals in each set and each says a word and 3 synonyms to describe itself (The hippo is big, large, huge, jumbo; the orca is bigger, gigantic, immense, enormous; the dinosaur is biggest, mammoth, humongous, colossal.). For the younger ones, I just read the hippo as "big", the orca as "bigger" and the dinosaur as "biggest". And so on.

What Size? by Debbie MacKinnon
Each page in this book has a number of pictures and a question - "Which is the smallest car?", "What color is the narrowest line?". Nice to see different adjectives - instead of just big and small, they have wide and narrow, tall and short, thick and thin.

I'm the Best by Lucy Cousins
A dog finds that he's the best because he's bigger than Ladybug, swims better than Donkey, faster than Mole, and a better digger than Goose. But then his friends discover that actually, Mole is the best digger, Goose the best swimmer, Donkey is the biggest. But at the end, Dog has fluffy ears, so he's still the best. Good book about comparisons and also about bragging.

Activity:
I couldn't come up with a great craft to go with this, so I put together a worksheet with different sizes of pictures (balls, stars, etc) and had the kids color them, then circle which item in each group was the biggest. Can't do something complex every week.

This theme was used the week of November 30, 2010.
Next week we'll be doing airplanes!

Thanksgiving

2010-11-26T11:40:00.000-08:00

This year for the Thanksgiving storytime I decided to focus on the very first Thanksgiving and what it was like "in the olden days". So we talked about how the Pilgrims came here on a boat and they had to cut down trees, build their own houses and raise all their own food. No grocery stores back then. And we learned about how the Native Americans helped the Pilgrims grow more food the next year and they had a big feast at harvest time. I tried to include all this background information at the beginning because most of the books on the first Thanksgiving are written for older kids, with more words and more difficult vocabulary. That doesn't mean I don't use them anyway...

Books:
What is Thanksgiving by Harriet Ziefert

A simple lift-the-flap book where a mouse questions his parents about Thanksgiving. It covers both the first Thanksgiving (very briefly and simply) and the traditions we have now. It's not the best book, but I always like to start with a board book or lift-the-flap to get their attention right away and outline what we're talking about in the simplest terms.

This First Thanksgiving Day by Laura Krauss Melmed
Counting from one to twelve, this book alternates between what the Pilgrims are doing to get ready and what the Natives are doing for the same. An added bonus for a smaller group is that there is a turkey hiding somewhere on each page that the kids had fun looking for.

This Is the Feast by Diane Z. Shore
A longer, poetic book, this describes how the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, established their settlement, were devastated by disease and death, were taught by Squanto how to plant, etc. etc.. I liked all the information in this one, but it was too long for most of my groups, so I clipped a few pages together and shortened the story a bit. It still made an effective telling of the Thanksgiving story and reinforced what we had been talking about.

Activity:

This week we made feather pens. I had been looking for an opportunity to do this craft. It was something that my parents would occasionally make for us and is so simple but fun for kids to play around with. All you need is a larger feather (we used wing and tail feathers from a turkey) and a simple ballpoint or stick pen. Tape is helpful too. Cut the tip off the feather and clean out anything you can from the hollow interior. Take the pen apart, just keeping the part that has the ink and the writing tip in it. Insert the pen into the feather and tape in place. This is a good use for pens that are just about used up since you can trim them better to fit inside the feather. I explained that this was NOT how they used to use feathers to write with in the "olden days" but it was a lot less messy. I had the tables covered with paper so the kids could test out their new quills.

Happy Thanksgiving!
This theme was used the week of November 22, 2010.
Next week we'll be doing superlatives: Big, Bigger Biggest!

ABC's

2010-11-19T12:27:00.000-08:00

Alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness is a key concept in learning how to read. I incorporate it into many storytimes, but it's always nice to do a storytime just completely focused on the ABC's. There are thousands of alphabet books out there, but many of them are oddly geared toward older children and have a whole paragraph (or page!) of text about whatever they choose each letter to stand for. But for preschoolers, here's my top favorites for ABC's.

Books:
Creature ABC by Andrew Zuckerman

I just discovered Creature ABC this summer and absolutely loved it. It has the upper and lowercase letters on one page, then a fantastic photograph of the animal (or concept) that it stands for. Simple. And some of the animals are not what you'd expect (N is for Nocturnal, for example). But still short and easy enough for the youngest to understand. And I really appreciate that it includes the lowercase letters as well.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr.
A classic, and one that many of the kids recognized and even had memorized. It doesn't spend too much time on each letter, but you do get to see all the letters - again both upper and lower case.

Old Black Fly by Jim Aylesworth
The ABC's here are not too obvious unless you point them out to the kids. The fly buzzes around people and objects starting with A and all the way to Z (where the fly gets squashed)!

Other books:
Didn't use these, but here are some other good ABC books:
Stuff on My Cat Presents: Cats A to Z
This is a cute board book with photos of a cat with various objects (H is for Hat, etc.)
My Little Minnesota ABC
Another board book, with Minnesota interests and landmarks, but I think it would require more one-on-one explanation than I have time for in storytime.

Activity:
Ok, good idea, poor execution here. I found out you can adhere foamies (in this case, foam letters) to jar lids and have instant cheap rubber stamps. Yay - enough stamps for all the kids! Unfortunately, I didn't have enough stamp pads for all the kids, so we used washable tempera paint. And this just ended up messy. With the proper stamp pads, though, this might be really cool. Maybe save this for next time we have an increase in our budget (feel free to laugh here).

This theme was used the week of November 19, 2010.
Next week we'll be talking about Thanksgiving!

Veteran's Day

2010-11-12T12:26:00.000-08:00

To honor those who have served our country, I decided to do a Veteran's Day theme this week. It's a difficult subject for a bunch of preschoolers, and there are few very easy books out there, but when has that ever stopped me?

Books:
Veteran's Day by Jaqueline Cotton and Veteran's Day by Leslie Kaplan
Both of these are good non-fiction overviews of what Veteran's Day is. We talked about "people in the army" and saying "thank you" to them.

F is for Flag by Wendy Cheyette Lewison
Ok, so this is technically a Flag Day book, but it's about our country and the flag, and works well for the younger kids, so I used this. To keep their interest, we counted the number of flags on each page.

America Is... by Louise Borden
I like this book that describes all the things that "America is". Different people, different states, different ways of life, but the same country, the same flag, etc. However, it's more of a Kindergarten and up book, since it gets a bit wordy. So I looked it over ahead of time and paper-clipped certain pages together to make a much shorter book. Hey, there's no rule that you have to read the WHOLE book. One kid did catch me skipping pages, but was ok when I explained that it was a bit longer than we could do in our time.

Other possible books:
I considered these, but they didn't ultimately work for my crowd.
Night Catch by Brenda Ehrmantraut
A soldier being deployed on the other side of the world explains how he'll play "catch" with his son at home using the North Star.
America: A Patriotic Primer by Lynne Cheney
An ABC book with a lot of extra information, and words that are just too complex for my kids.

Activity:
I created a coloring page with poppies for them to color and typed out the poem "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae, which is as follows:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
      Between the crosses, row on row,
   That mark our place; and in the sky
   The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
   Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
         In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
   The torch; be yours to hold it high.
   If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
         In Flanders fields.

This theme was used the week of November 8, 2010.

Next week we're doing ABC's.

Cookies

2010-11-04T11:48:00.000-07:00

We read about cookies this week at storytime, then got a little messy and made some ourselves!

Good cookie books:

If you Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff

I have a puppet with accessories that goes with "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" so if I don't have too many kids, I will give them each something (cookie, straw, napkin, broom, etc). and the mouse puppet will grab it from them when it comes to that time in the book.

The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson

The kids also liked "The Cow Loves Cookies" and joined in the refrain every time I read it, though I don't think all of them "got" the fact that the cow loved cookies because she had milk...

May I Please Have a Cookie by Jennifer Morris

"May I Please Have a Cookie" is a short reader book emphasizing manners, which we tied in at the end when we sat down to make our cookies.

Ginger Bear by Mini Grey

"Ginger Bear" was one of the favorite books this week about a gingerbread bear making his own friends (only to have them be eaten by a dog), then finding a place where a cookie could be safe.

Cookies: Bite-size Life Lessons by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
"Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons" is a cute vocabulary book, but I only used it for the older kids that were able to sit a little bit longer. This is a book that would be best as a one-on-one book and would grow on a child with repeated readings.

Activity:

This week we made cookies at the library! Now, we have a very small library and our "kitchen" consists of a teeny-tiny dorm fridge with a microwave stacked on top. But I found a recipe where you can bake sugar cookies in the microwave (and posted it here). So I brought my mixer, rolling pin, and cookie cutters from home, and for each group of storytime kids, we measured and mixed, then wrapped the dough up to cool and harden. But in our fridge, it only took a few seconds for the dough to be firm enough to use (or maybe there was some in the fridge previously and I traded, but don't tell the kids that). Each kid got their own slice of dough to pat down and use the cookie cutters on. Then I put the finished shapes on some parchment paper and voila! 1 minute later we had some piping hot, cooked through sugar cookies!

Next week we're talking about Veteran's Day!

This theme was used the week of November 1, 2010.

Halloween

2010-10-29T11:48:00.000-07:00

Halloween is always fun. I dress up (nothing too scary) and always encourage the kids to come in costume as well. This year I did a monster theme and dressed up as a generic monster (just because I had the horns and a large shirt already at home).

Actions:
I made a glove puppet with a monster for each finger and did a fingerplay of "5 Scary Monsters" that I found on thebestkidsbooksite.com
Five scary monsters howling out a roar,
One ran away, and then there were four.
Four scary monsters hiding in a tree,
One fell out, and then there were three.
Three scary monsters eating spider stew,
One got sick, and then there were two.
Two scary monsters having lots of fun,
One ran off, and then there was one.
One scary monster, afraid to be a hero,
He ran away, and then there were zero.

Books:

Monster Munchies by Laura Numeroff
A counting book showing more and more monsters eating various things. At the end it says "...better close this book up tight before they chew on you!", and I slammed the book shut and sat on it so the monsters didn't get out. The kids all thought that was hilarious and they kept telling me ways to keep the monsters from escaping the book.

My Monster Mama Loves Me So by Laura Leuck
Shows all the ways a monster mama shows she loves her little monster. Kids especially enjoyed the gross parts like swimming in the swamp and drinking lizard juice.

Jeremy Draws a Monster by Peter McCarty
Jeremy never leaves his room until a monster that he draws makes increasing demands. Jeremy finally draws a suitcase and a bus ticket for the monster and goes to play with the neighbor kids. This was one of the favorite books this week and the kids giggled at all the requests the monster made (I made sure to read them quickly and in a monster-y voice).

Even Monsters Need Haircuts by Matthew McElligott
Where do monsters get their hair cut? I read this book to the older kids and they though it was okay - they were mostly interested in recognizing the various monsters (werewolf, medusa, skeleton) than in the actual story. This might be one that would do better with multiple readings where the kids can ask more questions, or as a book to pass the time while waiting for getting their own hair cut.

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
I told the kids that was finally going to read the very best monster book in the world and brought out "Where the Wild Things Are". Always a classic, and kids get excited when I read a book that they are familiar with. And who doesn't love Max?

Activity:

Keeping with the "monster" theme, we made monster picture frames for them to put their Halloween photo in. I took a sheet of foam, cut a rectangle shape out of the middle (a little bit smaller than a 4x6 photo would be) and had them glue different sized googly eyes all around the edge. We glued a magnet strip to the top and bottom of the frame. They then would tape a photo behind it, and hang a monster photo on the fridge!

Next week we're making cookies!
This theme was used the week of October 25, 2010.

Snakes

2010-10-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that one of our staff members is deathly afraid of snakes, I went ahead with the theme for this week. I tried to save the realistic looking books for when she was out of sight, though.

Actions:
I brought my son's stuffed animal snake and we talked about different kinds of snakes. I had meant to do "I'm Being Swallowed by a Boa Constrictor", but got distracted as we started talking about rattlesnakes instead. So I ran to the back room, got my basket of maracas and we all sang "If You're a Snake and You Know It" instead. Made sure to put away all the maracas after the song was done as some of the kids were really getting into shaking them and I figured that we wouldn't be able to hear the stories otherwise.

Books:

Snakes Slither and Hiss by Fiona Lock
This non-fiction reader was the favorite book this week. Talking about different snakes and what they can do, each page ended with a "Hissss" that everyone joined in on.

I Am a Big Snake by Lidia Di Blasi and Nuria Roca
I actually have this book at home. It is a board book, but the text is above the board-book level, and the illustrations are downright creepy, they're so realistic (snake with fangs bared, snake eating eggs). But I love it and had to bring it for storytime.

The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash by Trinka Hakes Noble
Remember this one? A story told backwards, a girl relates the end of her field trip, then what happened before, then a little before that until the whole story comes out. Wonderful illustrations by Steven Kellogg make this a both a good book for reading out loud, and nice one to look at over and over to really appreciate what's going on in each picture.

Activity:
Did two different activities (actually 3) depending on the age of the group. For the youngest, we made snakes out of play dough. Nothing that complicated there, and good tactile stimulation for the little ones. For the older group, I printed out the head and numbers 1-5 of this number snake from DLTK kids and had them color, cut, and glue it together.

Next week we'll be doing Halloween!
This theme was used the week of October 18, 2010.

Fish

2010-06-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

Always fun to do a fishing storytime. There are so many good fish books and activities!

Books:

Trout, Trout, Trout by April Pulley Sayre
Swimmy by Leo Lionni
The Pout Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen
Big Al by Andrew Clements
Fish Eyes by Lois Ehlert

The favorite in my household is Trout, Trout, Trout. Wonderful, hilarious illustrations pair with a chant of fish names. It flows so well, both my kids had it memorized very quickly. But it's much better the more you read it and are familiar with it. So the favorite of the storytime kids ended up being The Pout Pout Fish, which lends itself well to over-the-top storytelling with a great frowny face every time you read the "pout pout fish" refrain.

Activity:

Use the song "Goldfish" by Laurie Berkener and have the kids dance and act out the words. Great silly song that the kids will love.
Thumbprint goldfish craft. Print out a fishbowl, have kids put their thumbs in orange paint and stamp in the bowl. Add eyes, fins, etc. with marker after the paint dries.
Rock painting. Have pictures of various sea creatures out, let kids pick out a rock and paint it to resemble a shark, sponge, pufferfish, or other. I made this a faster craft by having the rocks all pre-painted with a solid color, so the kids just had to paint on eyes, fins, and any other details, or glue on googly eyes.

This theme was used the week of June 7, 2010.

Crocodiles

2010-06-11T10:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, obviously I'm WAY behind on posting. So I'm going to make some short posts as placeholders until I have time to come in and fill in with more details. I'll be listing a topic, good books to go along with that topic, and a craft, as well as any songs, fingerplays, or other activities I come across.

Crocodile books:

Crocodile Beat by Gail Jorgensen
Crocodaddy by Kim Norman

Both "Crocodile Beat" and "Crocodaddy" are shorter books with good rhythm and are perfect for toddler/preschool storytimes. If you have kids that can sit still a little bit longer, try:

Keep Your Mouth Closed Dear by Aliki
I’d Really Like to Eat a Child by Sylvaine Donnio

Activity: Crocodile with hinged mouth. From our 2010 Summer Reading Program Manual, there was a cutout of a crocodile, a separate lower jaw and a separate tail. Have kids color the pieces, then attach the jaw & tail with brads.

Theme used week of June 7, 2010.

Mother's Day

2010-05-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

I'm busy getting the final things ready for our summer reading program, which starts beginning of June, but have to have our regular storytimes too! This week we talked about Mother's Day.

Book 1: Mother's Mother's Day by Lorna Balian
A story about mothers, and their mothers, and their mother's mothers, this book features a mouse bringing something to her mother for Mother's Day, but mom isn't home - she's bringing something to her mother, who's bringing something to her mother... then in the end, they all end up being chased into the same hole by a cat, so they all spend Mother's Day together.

Book 2: Max and the Dumb Flower Picture by Martha Alexander
Max doesn't want to color the dumb flower picture his teacher gives him. He knows his mom won't like it. So he grabs his crayons and runs away, where he draws a flower of his own. All the kids then draw their own flowers, and the moms are happy that each flower is unique. A nice message, but I think it says "dumb" a few too many times, and I know that's a word some parents object to. Left some of them out and used the book anyway.

Book 3: It's Going to Be Perfect! by Nancy Carlson
A sweet book by a Minnesota author/illustrator, this shows the ideals vs. reality of being a mom. At each age, the mom knows "it's going to be perfect" and baby will sleep through the night, potty train with ease, etc. But reality comes with sleepless nights and "NO!" as a favorite word. Each one is balanced, though with "Boy, am I glad you're here" and all the wonderful lessons this less-than-perfect child has taught her.

Activity: This year, I had the kids draw a picture of their mom and answer some questions about her, like "My mom is ____ years old." "She is the best at ________." It's always fun to see what the kids say about their mothers.

This theme was used the week of May 3-7, 2010. Next week: Kites!

Poetry & Rhyming

2010-04-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

Rhyming is a fairly easy concept for preschoolers to understand. And so many kids' books rhyme, so often when I'm reading a book where the rhyme is obvious, I'll pause to let the kids guess the rhyming word in the story. Not long, just a little bit to allow the kids that are paying attention to shout out the missing word. Alliteration is also simple for kids to grasp - words that start with the same sound. Since April is National Poetry Month, I thought we'd talk a little about rhymes and alliteration for this week's storytime.

Book 1: Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw
Of the thousands of books in rhyme for kids, I wanted to pick a couple whose main emphasis was on rhyming. Sheep in a Jeep is perfect. The story is secondary (though funny) - the point of the book is that most of the words end in "-eep". I though about (though decided against) also doing the board book "Truck Duck" by Michael Rex.

Book 2: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
Classic Dr. Seuss book. Wonderful rhymes, and plenty of alliteration too. What more can I say?

Book 3: Berenstain's B Book by Stan & Jan Berenstain
For our final "poetry" book, we talked about alliteration. The kids already (mostly) knew what it was, they just didn't know the word for it. But we practiced saying "alliteration" a few times, then read the "B Book". Afterwards, we thought of other words that started with B.

Activity: I was a slacker this week and just made a worksheet for this week's activity. Had pictures on one side of a hat, bear, etc. and had cat, hair, etc. on the other side. They were to connect the two pictures that rhymed.
Theme used week of April 26th, 2010. Next week: Mother's Day!

Rainbows

2010-04-05T15:46:00.000-07:00

We talked about colors this week, and I started off by having everyone name their favorite color. The library had purchased a couple of very neat books about color that I was so excited to read to the kids, and this was my opportunity.

Book 1: See the Colors by Dawn Babb Prochovnic
This book has a nice, calm phrasing that repeats the name of different colors on each page. "See the blue, see the blue, see the blue, little one. Chase the blue jays from our garden, see the blue, little one." What's neat is that it shows the word in sign language on each page (with more detailed instructions on how to do them in back). I signed and also had the kids signing the different colors on each page. At the end, I had a little "quiz" and it's amazing how many kids retained most or all of the signs by the end.

Book 2: The Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin and Rosana Faria
Most of the kids had some knowledge of sign language and how deaf people used it to communicate. But then I brought out The Black Book of Colors and we talked about how blind people experience the world. This book is so neat - all of us here at the library have been recommending it to people that come in. It's all black with white text, about a boy who can't see, but tells us what colors feel, taste, or smell like. Braille text is printed below the English text, and raised pictures (also in black) encourages kids to touch the pages and feel the green grass, the yellow feathers, or the black hair. I requested a couple other copies through ILL and left them with the daycare groups that I read with so that the kids could take turns reading and feeling the pages. I also showed them a thank you note we had received here at the library, written in braille, by a local girl who is blind and was introduced to this book through our recommendation.

Activity: Rainbow handprints
We ended with each child tracing their hand on various colors of construction paper. I let the older kids cut out their own, but helped those that we couldn't really trust with scissors yet. They drew their names on the handprint and I hung all of them in ROY G BIV order to form a rainbow in our front window. I like to show people that don't come during storytime some of the neat things we do here with the kids!

This theme was used the week of April 9, 2010.
Next week we're working with math and patterns.

Easter bunnies

2010-04-02T15:45:00.000-07:00

In some ways holidays are easy weeks to plan because you don't have to come up with a theme for that week; it's expected that you'll read Christmas books at Christmas, Easter books at Easter, etc. But on the other hand, there are only so many good holiday books out there. There's dozens of holiday books published each year, but I'm not going to read just anything at my storytime... there, doesn't that sound snooty enough? But truly, so many of these books are disposable, meant to be purchased by parents just because it has "Valentine's Day" or "Halloween" on the cover, and with no regard to the quality of the writing on the inside. Ok, enough ranting. I knew this was going to be a fun storytime as one of my moms had agreed to bring her bunny for all the kids to see and pet. But we started off with a few decent holiday books...

Book 1: My First Easter by Tomie dePaola
A short board book illustrating some of the things that happen around Easter. Nice that it includes both the religious and the secular: there's an egg hunt and new clothes for church on Sunday. I do just love dePaola's illustrations. He makes everything so clean and simple, and yet there's always something more to find in all of his pages.

Book 2: Owen's Marshmallow Chick by Kevin Henkes
Another great board book by a wonderful author/illustrator. Owen gets a number of different candies in his basket, each one named his "favorite" before he eats them up. Then he comes to the marshmallow chick, the same color as his blanket. Instead of eating it, he plays with it all day and calls it his "favorite" before he puts it on his shelf with his toys. Very cute and you can just see the excitement in Owen's eyes as he picks up each item in his basket.

Book 3: The Story of the Easter Bunny by Katherine Tegen
Before I brought out our "surprise guest", I read this story about the supposed origins of the Easter Bunny as a pet white rabbit in the home of an old couple who dye eggs, weave baskets, and deliver them all to the village children on Easter. Then one year the old couple are still asnooze when there is work to be done, so the bunny finishes their tasks and delivers the baskets. Little by little the bunny takes over, then moves to his own place with his own troop of bunny helpers to get all the baskets made and delivered each year.

Book 4: An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Aston
Actually this would be book 2.5, as I read it between "Owen's Marshmallow Chick" and "The Story of the Easter Bunny", but only for the daycare groups where I didn't have the live bunny coming. A beautifully illustrated book, it shows the wonderful variety of eggs: bird eggs, insect eggs, fish eggs, and more. A peaceful book that still manages to engage and astonish kids of all ages.

Experiment: Vacuum/Egg experiment
I had video taken of this as well, but my helper had the camera turned the wrong way, so until I get that figured out, the still photo will have to do. I've always wanted to try this experiment, but didn't think of doing it here until a coworker suggested it. You light a small piece of paper, drop it in a flask, then immediately put a hard-boiled egg on top. The vacuum created by the fire sucks the egg down into the flask with a satisfying pop! And, if you have a neck that is just a little bit too small (like I did), then it also tears the egg in half. Naturally there was a little talk about fire safety beforehand, but the kids just loved it. Hooray for science!

Theme used week of March 29, 2010.
Next week, we're talking about rainbows.

Spring has sprung!

2010-03-26T10:43:00.000-07:00

The spring equinox this year actually coincided with the warming of our cold weather here in Minnesota, and much melting of snow. That's not always the case, so this year we reveled in the diminishing white drifts and enjoyed feeling the warmth of the sun again. For this week, I had originally decided to start with the book "Spring Things" by Bob Raczka, but that made too many books that had too little text, so I left it out in favor of "The Tiny Seed".

Book 1: Cold Little Duck, Duck, Duck by Lisa Westberg Peters
This is a perfect book for the transition from winter to spring. Especially for us in Minnesota where it can change within a day (and then change back to winter, and then to spring, winter, and then spring again). A little duck flies north too early and lands on a frozen lake. But never fear, his warm thoughts cause the weather to warm up and spring arrives! Few words on each page, and there's an echo of three words (duck, duck, duck; cold, cold, cold; etc) on each page that I thought might be distracting, but the kids really enjoyed that extra touch.

Book 2: Mud by Mary Lyn Ray
Another book with minimal text on each page, describing the mud that results from the melting of winter into spring. The wonderful illustrations show a boy reveling in the mud - starting off in shoes, then disposing of them and enjoying the squishyness with his bare feet. Before I read this book, I asked the kids what kind of boots they wore to go out in the mud with and told them to keep an eye out for what color boots this boy was wearing. A few of them got the joke at the end - he wasn't wearing any boots!

Book 3: The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
Classic book about growing from a tiny seed into a flower. Of the group of seeds that begin the book, none of them survive except the tiniest seed, which grows to a flower. Not just any flower, of course, but "the biggest flower anyone had ever seen". And the seeds come out of that flower and the cycle begins again. I used this book to talk about what seeds need in order to grow: sun, water, and dirt. We saw how some of the seeds didn't get all three of these, so they didn't grow. This provided a good transition to the activity we were doing. You would think someone planned this out!

Activity: Planting seeds
I gave each of the children a small dixie cup that they decorated on the outside. Then we filled them with damp potting soil. Then everyone got to plant either a bean or a pea. I figured those were the largest seeds with the shortest germinating time that I could think of. Plus I had some left over from my own garden last year. Yay for cheap activities! So we had the "dirt" need covered, and I did get out a plant mister and water each of their cups to fulfill the "water" need before they set their pots on the windowsill for the "sun". With the open storytimes, I had the kids take the pots home with them, but I had the daycares leave theirs here, and by the next week we had little tops peeking out, and then in two weeks, we had bean plants nearly half a foot tall! I sent the plants home at that point. A little reluctantly, since it's been fun watching this greenness growing on the desk next to me, but they're getting too big for their cups and need to be set free.
Theme used week of March 22, 2010.

Next week: Easter is coming, with a real bunny!

Punching the clock

2010-03-19T12:32:00.000-07:00

In honor of daylight savings starting (and to remind myself of the fact that I accidentally set my clocks the wrong way one year), we talked about time this week for storytime. Considering that we had mostly preschoolers, I kept the minute hand at 12 and just concentrated on the hour hand. I had a toy clock with me that we could practice with.
We started off by singing a version of this song: http://www.songsforteaching.com/jimrule/ticktocktimeclock.htm
I changed it a little by singing "Tick tock, tick tock, goes the big clock. I know the time is ___ o'clock."
We started at one o'clock (using the toy clock) and sang it through about 6 with me changing the hours each time. Since they mostly had the hang of the melody and words by that point, I asked if we could speed it up. Because really, what kid doesn't love singing faster and faster until it's almost impossible to understand the words?

Book 1: The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle
Eric Carle does such a good job teaching concepts. I have read The Very Busy Spider before to a storytime group, and it's a wonderful book on its own, with animals trying to talk to the spider at different times during the day. Then I found this version that is a board book with a movable clock right in it. Bonus! So I was able to change the hands for every time an animal interacted with the spider and the kids could tell me what time it was.

Book 2: What Time Is It, Mr. Crocodile? by Judy Sierra
I used the Very Busy Spider clock for this book too, where Mr. Crocodile plans out his day (culminating in catching, cooking, and eating the monkeys) but is foiled by those same monkeys during each hour of the day. Naturally at the end he writes out a new plan for tomorrow which includes playing with and cooking for the monkeys.

Activity: Making clocks
The logical activity with all this would be having the kids make their own clock. Sometimes I buck the "logical" trend, but this time I just went with it. I knew I was going to be gone at a library conference for 3 of my weekly storytimes, so I wanted something not too complicated for my substitute. Printed out this template from Enchanted Learning, and had them glue the clock to a page that said "I get up at ________ I eat lunch at ________ I go to bed at ________" Put the hands on using a paper fastener, and there you go. Simple clock craft.

Used this theme the week of March 15, 2010.

Teamwork

2010-03-12T13:43:00.000-08:00

At storytime this week we talked about how things are easier when we all work together. I started off by handing each child a food item - salt, pepper, carrot, onion, celery, cabbage, and chicken. As I handed them out I talked about what they were and how yummy each was (except for the salt and pepper, where we agreed that a little was good, but too much was not). Then I gave the last child a rock. You know where I'm going with this, of course...

Book 1: Stone Soup by Marcia Brown
A classic story of cooperation, where 3 soldiers trick/encourage suspicious villagers to share what little food they have by making stone soup together. This is a longer book, so I used the props I had given the children to have them come up one at a time and add them to the "soup" we were making. I used the plastic food that I had at home, so I changed some ingredients to match what I had and skipped others entirely. At the end, I emphasized that everyone shared and made the soup together.

Book 2: The Gigantic Turnip by Aleksei Tolstoy
A cumulative tale of a man, woman, cow, pigs, cats, hens, etc. who try their hardest to pull a gigantic turnip from the garden. In the end (of course) it only comes out when they all pull together. Again, this was a little bit wordy, but the repetition made it easier for the kids, and I tried to have them join in "...but the turnip would not come out.". I made up flannelboard images for this story, but in the end I decided not to use them as I thought it would distract from the flow of the story.

Book 3: Sand Castle by Shannon Brenda Yee
This story of a group of kids working together to build a sand castle was going to be my shorter story that I would have read second but the library I requested it from was slow and I didn't receive it until the end of the week. I think it would have worked well enough, so maybe next time I'll request it a bit earlier!

Activity: Making a dinosaur
Before the kids came, I drew a basic Stegosaurus body minus the back plates and the legs on a large piece of paper. I drew 4 legs and enough back plates and tail spines to have enough for each kid. I had them all cut out, then passed them out and had each child decorate their own dinosaur part. We assembled the dinosaur and all decorated the body together. I tried again to emphasize that it was only by working together that we could see the complete picture.

Theme used week of March 8, 2010.

Next week we'll talk about time in honor of the start of daylight savings!

Little Pigs

2010-03-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

National Pig Day was March 1. How can you not celebrate a holiday like that? And there are so many good books and stories about pigs... I started off this week by pulling out my great pig puppet that I bought for my son several years ago. It's so nice and soft, and looks just like a good little piglet should. I asked if the kids had all brought their pigs too, but they all claimed they hadn't. But I proved them wrong when we all did "This Little Piggy" on our hands. Actually, for one storytime we took off our shoes and socks, but I figured it was better to stay with hands...

Book 1: Little Oink by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
A sweet story about a pig who prefers to be clean, and hates "mess up time". The kids enjoyed the reversal in this one, where Little Oink is required to dump out all his toys and put on a stained shirt before he can go out and play. Nice jokes in there for parents too - the pigs dig for truffles, eat from a trough at school, etc.

After Little Oink, I pulled out my pig puppet again, and added a wolf puppet, and we did the story of the Three Little Pigs. I don't know what it is about puppets, but the kids thought this was just the greatest thing they had seen in a long time, and everyone joined in when the wolf was blowing the houses down.

Book 2: My Lucky Day by Keiko Kasza
After nearly being eaten by a wolf, we then moved on to My Lucky Day, where our pig-hero narrowly avoids the same fate when he happens on the fox's house. But this tricky pig instead gets the fox to give him a bath, feed him dinner, give him a nice massage, and then escapes when the fox collapses, exhausted. A little more text than a typical book I read for storytime, but with different voices and a compelling story, the kids had no problems sitting still for this one.

Book 3: Olivia by Ian Falconer
We rounded off Pig Week with one of my favorite pigs, Olivia. Just like so many of the storytime kids themselves, Olivia is an energetic pig, good at wearing people out. There are so many good Olivia stories, but I chose the original as a nice ending to a fun storytime.

Activity: This Little Piggy
This week we did just a simple coloring page of pigs, with numbers to trace. Nice & easy. Theme done week of March 1, 2010.

Space

2010-02-26T14:09:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, my 6-year-old son came home and asked me if other galaxies were real or not (we've been watching Star Wars lately), so we got into a discussion about planets, galaxies, and what makes up our universe. Since I like talking about science and space, I decided to cover that in this week's storytime. I did have a harder time finding the books this week because most books that discuss the planets and stars in any detail are just too long and difficult for a preschool group. I know these books must be out there, but I don't feel like I exactly found what I wanted - a simple non-fiction book that named the planets without going into much detail, talked about stars and moons and other things on a pretty basic level. I'll keep my eyes out something like that for next time.

Anyway, I started this week by showing a display we have here at the library that shows the solar system and talked about how all the planets go around the sun. Most of them could pick out which one was Earth, and several already knew that the sun was a star. We all sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" then as a transition to our books.

Book 1: The Little Star by Deborah Nash
We started off this with this reader about a star that wants to live on Earth. The moon then gives him a tour of things in the sky and he decides to stay. At the end, a boy says he wants to live in the sky instead of on Earth. A simple story, but I do have a little problem with it that there's not a distinction between "sky" and "space", so the moon & star bounce on clouds and also roast hot dogs by the sun. Even some of the preschoolers notice that clouds and rainbows are not what we find in space. I did like the way it ended, because then I asked them questions like "Where do boys live?" "Earth" "Where does the sun live?" "Space".

Book 2: Night Goes By by Kate Spohn
Another book that didn't quite get at what I wanted to cover, but it was a nice soft story about the sun and moon (and star) taking turns in the sky. Loved the illustrations, and the soft colors and minimal text made me think about using this one for a bedtime book some time.

Book 3: My Place in Space by Robin & Sally Hirst
I kept this one for my Kindergarten group as it was too in-depth for my younger ones. A neat story about a young boy Henry and his sister getting on a bus and the bus driver getting quite an education when he patronizingly asks them if they know where they live. Henry goes into a detailed explanation of city, country, planet, solar system, galaxy, supercluster, and universe. Lots of neat facts about just how big space is, and this is a book that would only get more interesting with more readings.

Activity: Magic Stars
I found this one on the DLTK Kids' site. I laid down white paper on our tables and drew stars, moons, and planets all over them with white crayon. Then we painted over the paper with diluted tempera paint (washable paint, of course). My black paint was almost gone, so I mixed it with blue, and it turned a beautiful midnight blue color. The kids loved making it "turn from day to night" and find all the stars. I don't think there was any white space left at the end of any session - the kids probably would have painted longer if they had more paper. I think we may use this project again this summer when we do an ocean theme - I'll take some time to draw fish and other sea creatures for them to "find" next time!
This theme was used the week of February 22, 2010.

Next week: Pigs!

Presidents' Day

2010-02-18T12:26:00.000-08:00

Since the library was closed on Monday for Presidents' Day, I wanted to talk to the kids about who the President is and what he does. Quite a few of the kids knew who our current President was, and several shared opinions about him that they had heard at home - good and bad! Many also knew George Washington was the first President (though some guessed George Bush). I also brought up Abraham Lincoln, since some knew his name and since it tied in with the craft we did later. I showed them several coins and talked about which President was on each. We discussed how the President was in charge of the whole country just like their parents were in charge at their house or teachers were in charge in the classroom. In one of my groups, a girl asked how a person became President, so we talked briefly about how adults get together and vote and pick the person they think will do the very best job, and whoever gets the most votes, wins.

Book 1: What Does the President Do? by Amanda Miller
A brief non-fiction overview of what the President does - make laws, meet with other leaders, lead the military. I like including non-fiction books, and this was at the perfect level for preschool and Kindergarteners. A recent book, it includes photos of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. The kids were most impressed that the President has his very own airplane.

Book 2: I'm Going to Washington to Visit the President by Tanya Roitman
Readers are nice filler books - they're very short and cover basic concepts. This book shows a little boy, who is going to visit the President. President Lincoln? Nope. President Washington? Nope. President Jefferson? Nope. THE President at the White House. A nice addition because it reinforced some of the ideas from the first book (White House, Oval Office) and listed a number of former Presidents (all of who happen to be on coins).

Book 3: Madam President by Lane Smith
The final book, Madam President, worked ok for storytime, though it would be best as a one-on-one book. A humorous look at a girl pretending to be President, it shows approving lunch, doing "photo-ops", and "attending state funerals". Some of the concepts were simple and silly enough for the children to grasp right away (being protected by her secret-service pet), but others such as the toys in her "capable cabinet" are amusing, but would need a little more explanation than I can do in a group setting. So we just moved through that part and spent a little more time on the "veto" section, where the kids really enjoyed vetoing everything, complete with thumbs-down signs.

Activity: Penny necklace
I gave each of the children three stars cut out from cardstock - one red, one white, and one blue, each about half an inch smaller than the last. They decorated each star, glued one on top of another, then glued a penny to the middle. I punched a hole in their stars and let them thread a string through to make a necklace that they could wear. As we were working, I talked about Abraham Lincoln (the penny guy) and had each child repeat the name as they put their penny on their necklace. George Washington would have been easier to work with since more kids knew his name, but I wasn't about to spend a quarter on each necklace.
Theme used week of February 15, 2010

Next week: Space - the final frontier!

Valentine's Day

2010-02-12T14:55:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day is a nice holiday for preschoolers because they "get it". Christmas? Well, there's Santa, Jesus, presents, lots of snow...many things to focus on. Same with Easter. And other holidays like Martin Luther King Jr Day and President's Day require a lot of background knowledge that they just don't have yet. But Valentine's Day is about love. And candy. Mom loves me, so I get candy. Easy enough. :)
So we began our talk about Valentine's Day with a talk about love, and how parents love us when we're good and even when we're naughty. It's reassuring to the kids to hear that even though mama may be mad and yell sometimes, she will always love you.

Book 1: How Do I Love You? by P.K. Hallinan
This is a cute, short book about love. It's written in first person, telling of how "I love you on your very best and very worst of days." The easy rhyming makes it a nice read-aloud book. It's also got parts that will make the parents smile, like how "you wear your pants with the front part in the back", but it doesn't go over the kids' heads either, like some of the picture books that we adults like.

Book 2: Happy Valentine's Day, Mouse! by Laura Numeroff
A new board book by Laura Numeroff, the kids were excited by this, because almost all of them know the mouse from her "If You Give a Mouse..." series. Very short, it shows all of mouse's friends and tells why she loves each of them. It ends up with all of them arriving at his house for Valentine's Day. It ended a bit abruptly, but board books are so short that it is difficult to have a complete story sometimes. So I changed the ending a little bit - my license as the one telling the story!

Book 3: The Day It Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond
This is a short, sweet story about a girl who catches hearts in the rain and uses them to make different valentines for four different friends. I like this one because it emphasizes creativity (she makes the cards herself) and thoughtfulness (each card was different, based on who was getting it). We read it straight through, (noticing at the end that hearts are growing on trees) then paged back to see which of her friends had received each valentine.

Book 4: Slugs in Love by Susan Pearson
For my 5-year-old group, I left out "How Do I Love You?" in favor of "Slugs in Love". It is a bit longer than books I usually read for storytime, but it's a cute story and I knew the older kids would enjoy it. It has two slugs writing each other love notes in slime on various things in the garden. I ham up the slime part a bit and the kids think it's pretty funny. They also were getting excited about the rhyming parts of the love notes the slugs sent, especially since that class is talking about rhyming right now.

Activity: Valentine's Cards
Nothing too complicated this week. Just printed off a card on red paper with an image of a heart on the front and let the kids decorate with markers and stickers to give to someone they love. It's nice to have some open-ended activities every so often so the kids can really use their creativity. Happy Valentine's Day!
Theme used week of February 8, 2010.

Seasons

2010-02-05T12:18:00.000-08:00

In honor of Groundhog's Day this week, we talked about the seasons in general. Seasons seem like a basic concept, but can get confusing for some preschoolers. Yes, spring is a season, but no, Easter is not a season and March is not a season. Easter is actually a holiday in the month of March which falls in the season of Spring... you can see where they can get a little mixed up. The easiest way I've found to discuss seasons is what we do and what we wear in each one. I did originally want to read "Red Sings from Treetops" by Joyce Sidman instead of "Old Bear", but several kids in my first group on Tuesday actually wandered off when I was reading that, so I finished the "spring" section and did our craft then. That's why I always have a back-up book! I do think it's a great book, but probably needs more concentration and explanation than is available in a storytime setting.

Book 1: Curious George Seasons
It's nice to start with a character everyone knows. And who doesn't love Curious George? This board book has limited text, and a wheel you spin to show things that we associate with each season. I pretty much disregarded the text and said things like, "What do we see in springtime?" and pointed to each picture to have the kids name what George was doing or wearing.

Book 2: The Circle of Seasons by Gerda Muller
This is a nice peaceful book with descriptions on all four seasons and lovely illustrations. Originally four separate books, now each section is linked by "You know it's Spring (summer, fall, etc.) when..." and then a discussion of what we do and feel that season. Several wordless pages are included in each section, which I could see getting more scrutiny if you were reading one-on-one instead of to a group.

Book 3: Old Bear by Kevin Henkes
I am a fan of Kevin Henkes. And though this is a much simpler story than some of his others, the illustrations complement it perfectly. A bear, sleeping (I sneak in a little talk about hibernation in there) in his den, dreams about the different seasons and then finally wakes up when it really is spring. Simple story, but the repetition reinforces the names and concepts with spring, summer, fall, and winter.

Activity: Season Sorting
I made up a sheet for the kids, divided into quarters. Labeled each quarter with "spring", "summer", "fall" and "winter" along with a little illustration of flowers, a sun, leaves, and snowflakes so the pre-readers could tell which was which. Then I gave them each a stack of 8-10 stickers that I had made up in Word with various clip-art pictures of skis, sandcastles, baby chicks, pumpkins, and other seasonal items. The kids then were to put the stickers under which season they represented. They also drew pictures of things from that season. If you were doing this individually, you might also have the kids cut out pictures from magazines and paste them in as well. The kids especially loved the snowmobile sticker I put in there...
Theme used week of February 1, 2010.

Teddy Bears

2010-01-29T13:52:00.000-08:00

Bears are always a fun topic. I chose it for this week because of A.A. Milne's birthday on Jan. 18th. He was the creator of Winnie the Pooh. I would have like to read some Pooh stories, but they don't really fit into the time and energy level of the kids I usually get. So I brought my husband's old teddy bear from home (his was bigger and more cuddly than mine) and the kids were thrilled. They all got to have a turn hugging the bear. We talked about different kinds of bears, what bears ate, and if they were scary or not. Consensus: real bears = scary, teddy bears = not.

Book 1: We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen
This is a fun, interactive book to start with. I have the kids make noises and actions for different parts of the book - rub hands together for the long wavy grass, swim with their arms to cross the river, splurch through the mud, make wind noises for the snowstorm, etc. The most fun, of course, is doing all of the noises really fast when we're running away from the bear.

Book 2: Where's My Teddy by Jez Alborough

Next we did a book with both a real bear and a teddy bear. This is one of those books that I have nearly memorized. I first heard of it when my nephew Grant was 1 and always saying "it's dark and horrible in there". But Eddie, the little boy in the story, bravely goes to find his teddy anyway, and encounters a giant bear also looking for his (giant) teddy. They both are scared of each other and go running back home with their own teddy bears - something which the kids here always think is funny.

Book 3: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr.

This is one of my favorite books to read for storytime, or out loud to any kids. A quarter to half of them usually have heard it before, and the rest pick up the pattern easily. No matter the group, we always end up chanting it together, with me turning the page just before they need to figure out what animal is looking at the first: "Red bird, red bird, what do you see? I see a yellow duck looking at me." Kids always seem so proud to have "read" a book with me.

Activity:
I printed out this bear from DLTK's website and had the kids color their bears. Some chose to make rainbow bears, but we did go through a lot of brown markers too. Then we glued cotton balls on their tummies to make them fuzzy. Some made their bears have fuzzy ears, feet, hands, or even eyes too. With the older kids, I had them practice writing their own name, then coming up with a name for the bear and writing that on there too.
One of the moms on Tuesday also showed us the webcam on http://www.bear.org/ of a bear in her den with cubs!
This theme was used the week of January 25, 2010.

Diversity

2010-01-22T16:20:00.000-08:00

For Martin Luther King Jr's birthday this week, I talked a little about diversity. This is a little difficult to do when most of the kids I read to come from the same ethnic background, but it's good to talk about anyway. I'd like to think that racism is completely foreign to these kids, so I talk about it on a very basic level: a long time ago, people thought that people that were different should go to different schools, eat at different restaurants, etc. But with the help of MLK and others, we have learned that we can all be friends. I tell them it would be boring and no fun if everyone was exactly the same.

Book 1: Global Babies
A nice, short board book with few words, showing babies from various cultures. I read the book, then talk about how babies are cute and are loved no matter who they are and where they live. And we always decide that all of these babies could be friends.

Book 2: Whoever You Are by Mem Fox

This book by Mem Fox illustrates the differences and similarities of children "all over the world". Her writing style really lends itself to being read out loud, and the illustrations are eye-catching. I saw that few of my kids latched on to the phrase "blood is the same" with a picture of a boy with a skinned knee, but I just kept reading and tried to emphasize the "all over the world" repetition instead.

Book 3: Colorful World by CeCe Winans
I read this book to the first couple storytime groups, but not the last few. I really like the illustrations, but the words don't "flow" right for me. I do realize it's a song, and maybe if I listened to it it would read easier, but as a book by itself, I'm not too excited about it.

Activity:
It's difficult to find a quick, easy craft related to diversity for preschoolers. So I just did a maze, with a boy at one end and a group of other children (all obviously different cultures) at the other end. The kids did the maze, then colored the children and drew what they were all going to play with together.
This theme was used the week of January 18, 2010.

Avast ye scurvy dogs!

2010-01-15T15:54:00.000-08:00

Pirates is a pretty easy theme. Lots of cute books about pirates, though some of them I've found to be too long for my kids. I did mean to wear an eyepatch and a pirate hat, swiped from my son's dress-up bin, but... I forgot. Oh well.

When I took out the books, I looked at them, put them back, and told the kids that they were just too scary. Naturally they assured me they liked scary books, even scary pirate books, so we began...

Book 1: That's Not My Pirate by Fiona Watt

I love this series of touch and feel books. And so does every single kid I've met. I read each page, then let all the kids come up and feel the texture on each page. If it's taking a while for me to let each child touch the page, then I talk about other words that could describe that texture: smooth, shiny, slippery, not bumpy, etc.

Book 2: A is for Arr! by Laura Purdie Salas
Many ABC books seem to have too much text with each letter to use for storytime. This one was a little shorter than most, so I did read it for a couple of my older groups, but just did the letter and associated word for my younger kids. I tried to use Arr as many times as possible during this book. :)

Book 3: Night Pirates by Peter Harris
For a couple of my groups, I read this book, and for others, I read Book 4 instead. I liked this book because it had girl pirates (rough, tough, little girl pirates), but most of the kids I read this to didn't "get" that the pirates were stealing the front of Tom's house and then returned it upside down. The illustrations really could have been done better in order to convey this.
Book 4: I Love My Pirate Papa by Laura Leuck
Good, sweet story about a boy going through his day with his pirate dad, and how his dad helps him "buckle on his gear" and reads to him about Captain Hook before he's tucked in. Here again, there were a few things that went over the kids' heads with some unfamiliar vocabulary, but the message of love did come through.

After the books, we colored a pirate coloring page from Family Fun. I'm thinking of doing a treasure-hunt next time, with a map of the library. Maybe hide "gold" coins that they can trade in for treats.

Did this theme the week of January 11, 2010.

Thing 6 - Image Generators

2008-06-06T11:03:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's another serious time sucker. But fun (of course). Might think about adding these to our website every once in a while. The trading cards are pretty fun too. I'll have to come up with a cool "library" game to go with them.

Thing 5 - More Flickr

2008-06-06T10:26:00.000-07:00

...so you see what's on my mind right now.

Some neat toys, but much potential for being time suckers! Don't see a whole lot of potential for use at the library except for as fun graphics to plop on the site or blog every once in a while.

Thing 10 update

2008-06-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

Well, the wiki is up and running and has withstood a day and a half of kids signing up. Good news: it works, and works from any computer.
Bad news: it is SLOW. Don't know if it's just pbwiki, but as I'm typing in each child's info, we have to wait 5-10 seconds for just about every field until the computer can catch up. It's just as slow from my home computer, so it's not the machine. Might just use Excel next year.

Thing 10 - Wikis

2008-06-03T19:06:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I'm doing things a little bit out of order here, but we're getting ready for summer reading to start (Thursday) and we were talking about how to best have things set up for the rush of kids expected to arrive on the first few days. Previously, the library had used a database program to sign up all the kids. Which is fine, but it's over 10 years old, and only installed on one computer. So I thought a little, and since I've been busy redesigning the website anyway, added an online signup. You can also get your reading contracts and coloring contest pages at home, since I put them up as pdf's. Slowly, slowly, we'll get this site up and actually used. As an aside, I really like the emailmeform that Tom showed us in the last users meeting. :)

Anyway, our library director is a little farther along on the 23 things that I am, and she just finished Thing 10... And I have to admit, now that I've explored wikis a bit, it seems like a good option.

Yes, I've used wikipedia before, but never edited anything before. I also didn't realize that there were wikis out there that you could set up yourself. But I added my post to the 23 Things wiki, and then went ahead and created a wiki for our summer reading signup. Was a little concerned about privacy, but it looks like you can restrict who can see the site, so that's good. So here's what the wiki looks so far:

So we'll see how it works under fire. Might end up being useful, or we may just revert to the old database.

Thing 4- Flikr

2008-05-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

I set up my very own Flickr account. Just two photos to post, but it's a start. I also played around a bit with our library's account, including lightening some of the photos with Picnik. It's handy to have the photo editing capability right there instead of using a separate program and then uploading.

I've been uploading photos for a few years now, but have used Snapfish and Kodak's EasyShare for the most part. I think I'll continue to use Kodak for my family photos, since I'm familiar with it and the photos are always private. However, for library photos that are mostly going to be viewed online by whomever, Flickr seems the way to go.

Mostly the photos we have been posting for our library are of storytime and other children's activities. And so far no parents have objected to having their child's photo publicly posted online. I think privacy is something that has to be done with a little common sense. We're not going to be able to go around to each person every week and get them to sign a consent form. But if we post the pictures, but leave names and identifying information off, I think that is secure enough for most. Seems to work for the newspapers.

I thought the Clemens and Alcuin libraries had a great idea with their bookshelf photos. It doesn't seem like it would take that much time - at least the online part. Selecting and arranging the books would probably take a bit though. May have to try that soon.

Thing 3 - RSS

2008-05-28T20:07:00.000-07:00

Played around a bit with adding some RSS feeds to my Google. Added a few news feeds, our own library blog feed, as well as this here blog, just for fun. So I'll get notified when I post this. :) I can see how a lot of people would like this. I haven't used it before because, to be honest, I just don't have that many blogs and sites that I look at regularly. But I may use it anyway. We'll see.

I have seen that Google and others have a little RSS news feed box that you can add to your website. At least, I think it's an RSS. I'll have to look at it again. But that might be a nice thing to add to a library website, especially with local news. Hmm. I'll have to check to see if our paper or Rochester's has a feed and add that to my list.

I also wish the link for adding a blog to your feed was a little more prominent. Maybe it's just because I'm just venturing into the blogosphere, but it took me a while to figure out that it was at the bottom of the page. Silly me, I was looking for that little orange icon...

Thing 2 - Library 2.0

2008-05-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

Library 2.0 appears to be different things to different people, and each defend or blast it depending on their own view of what it is. Ok, so I suppose that's not much different from other abstract concepts such as "test-based learning" or even "democracy". But after reading the blog post by John Blyberg, and the OCLC newsletter, and after meaning to watch the video (but being hampered by having no speakers on my 'puter), what I'm taking from it is basically "be more interactive", both technology-wise and other-wise.

Hmm, let me think for a minute. Yup, that makes sense. Isn't that what libraries have been doing for a while now? You want it - we'll get it for you. I think Library 2.0 is just about "taking it to the next level" or "thinking outside of the box". Let's add "work smarter, not harder" to that list of corporate catchphrases. So we'll add blogs and wikis and other technologies to our existing mission of reaching out to people.

So doing this 23 things is part of my part to add some interaction. Redo our website, maybe do a myspace page, but also expand some of the things we're currently doing (and doing well) like book deliveries for daycares, intergenerational storytime, cooperation with the schools, etc.

So those are my disorganized thoughts about that. Trying not to edit myself too much, since from what I've seen, blogs are generally supposed to be a bit rambling... :)

Setting up the blog

2008-05-19T08:32:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this is my '23 things' blog. Let's see how it goes! I haven't had a blog before, but have a Facebook page, so I don't think this should be too hard. It was pretty easy to set up, anyway.