Catapults in the Library!

In the summer I run a "Crafty Kids Club" for grades 3-5, which meets once a month.  Since this year's SRP has a science-y theme, I wanted to go along with that, and what could be more science-y than making our own catapults?!? And what do kids enjoy more than launching stuff across the room?!?

Craft Stick Catapult

You can download excellent and easy instructions from pbskids.org HERE.



All you need are craft sticks, rubber bands, and some bottle caps.  (Note: I found that the wider craft sticks worked better than the skinny ones.) Since you probably have these things lying around (and you can raid the recycling bin for caps), this is a really inexpensive and easy craft to pull off!

Now, since assembling the catapults isn't too time consuming, I thought we could also make some targets.  I found this simple bull's-eye from Google Images:

And since I know we've got a lot of Angry Birds fans in our community, I thought it would be fun to add those darn pigs to the targets. I found some coloring pages from Google Images:

Ta-da! Instant Pig Target!

Now all you need are some mini marshmallows and you'll be ready to start shooting!

This was so much fun and the kids LOVED it! The catapults were so easy to assemble, so we had a lot of time to play with them.  I got out regular sized and mini marshmallows, as well as various sizes of pom-poms, so they could experiment with what launches the best.  My teen helpers ( I couldn't survive without them!!) set up some foam building blocks as targets for the kids to shoot at, and even though it was virtually impossible to knock them down with marshmallows, the kids didn't care at all!  I was so delighted to see them experimenting and inventing new games to play.  Kids who didn't even know each other were laughing hysterically while trying to shoot marshmallows into their mouths, while others were re-building with the blocks to create the perfect targets to shoot at.  I was also able to sneak in an easy science lesson about potential and kinetic energy!!

This was such a success and everyone had a great time - and so easy too! Try it at your library!

Bookworms Book Club - Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs!

This was our last Bookworms Book Club meeting for the school year, and what a great year it has been!

This month we read: Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs by Mo Willems

This is a great example of a fractured fairy tale, putting a twist on the traditional Goldilocks and the Three Bears story.

In Willems' version, the dinosaurs make chocolate pudding instead of porridge, so naturally, we had chocolate pudding cups as our snack!

Yum!

We had such a great time reading through this book together because there is so much see! Just check out these endpapers:

These made everyone laugh!

There are also plenty of good dinosaur jokes:

"Wipe Your Talons"

And of course, we hunted for, and found, the Pigeon! Can you find him hiding in this page?

(check the cookie jar!)

After we finished reading our book, we quickly skimmed through this traditional version of the tale by Byron Barton:

Next, it was time to compare and contrast! (yes, I used to be a Language Arts teacher) I like using visual aids, so we drew a big Venn diagram on our dry erase board:

We talked about what was the same in the two stories (i.e. Goldilocks, three of everything - animals, bowls, chairs, beds, etc.) and what was different (Dinos vs. bears, etc.) The children really did a great job with this, and thought about things such as the characters' intentions in both stories, as well as their actions.  There was definitely some critical thinking going on!

Next, we brainstormed other fairy tale stories to which we would like to add dinosaurs.  Here are some of the titles we came up with:

Dinorella
Beauty and the Dinosaur
Sleeping Dinosaur

Snow White and the Seven Dinosaurs

If you had more time, it would be great to have kids draw a cover page for one of these fractured fairy tales!

Next, it was time to get up and play! Since Goldilocks couldn't find a chair to sit in, I thought we should play Musical Chairs! This was so much fun!

We even used a dinosaur song: We Are the Dinosaurs by the Laurie Berkner Band

As the kids got "out," they were handed a goodie bag (leftover SRP prizes from previous years), so there were really no hurt feelings about losing.

Next was our craft, which we actually ran out of time for and didn't get to do! This was a little sad because I spent quite a bit of prep time tracing and cutting out pieces, but I suppose I'll just have to save them for another time.

Here is my Dinosaur Suncatcher (thank you, Pinterest!)

The outline of the dinosaur is cardstock, stuck to a sheet of clear contact paper.  You fill in the inside with pieces of tissue paper, and the close it up with another sheet of clear contact paper, and cut out your dinosaur! Voila! I think he's pretty cute!

I did have time to have the kids vote on their favorite books that we read this year and here are the results:

Easiest to Read: TIE between The Hallowiener by Dav Pilkey and Fancy Nancy Sees Stars by Jane O'Connor

Funniest: We Are in a Book by Mo Willems

Favorite: Green Eggs and Ham by good ol' Dr. Seuss!

This was such a great year for this little book club that could.  Looking back, I had very consistent attendance all year long, and such enthusiastic little readers! I can't wait to get started on planning next year's meetings! See you in September!

Bookworms Book Club - Fancy Nancy Sees Stars

My K-2 book club met this month to discuss Fancy Nancy Sees Stars by Jane O'Connor.

 

While the book is fairly simple and straightforward, I saw a lot of potential possibilities for activities to do with this group.  And stars are just so much fun!

 

First, we obviously had to eat star-shaped sugar cookies.  With frosting.  And sprinkles!  If Fancy Nancy eats them, we can too!  Of course, I forgot to take pictures, but they were pretty yummy.  I let the kids frost and sprinkle their own cookies, which they thoroughly enjoyed!

"Sprinkles make them sparkle." So true!

 

We read the book together once, and while the boys in the group were not thrilled about doing a Fancy Nancy book, they actually participated the most in the conversation! What I love about these books are the "fancy words," so we had some great discussion about vocabulary words. These words were all related to space and stars!

And there is a nice guide in the back of the book!

 

Next, we had fun with a game I made up: I split the kids into two teams, gave them each a felt board, and a bunch of felt stars.  Their task was to create a constellation out of stars.  The other team then had to guess what picture the constellation made.  This was so much fun, we did it three times!

This was my sample - can you guess? It's a house!

 

I also had a Fancy Nancy MadLib game, but we didn't end up having time for it.  You can find it, along with many other great teacher resources at Fancy Nancy World.



Our final activity was a simple, open-ended craft.  On black paper, the kids could create a constellation of their own with star stickers and white crayons.  They got really creative here and had a lot of fun with this!

This is my simple example - the big dipper!

 

This book club is so much fun to run, and fairly low-stress and low-prep.  These kids are so excited about books and reading, and I love being a part of that!

 

Next month is our last meeting of the school year - we're reading Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs by Mo Willems!

The importance of free play in the library

My deadline for summer reading club programs is next week.  For months I have been working the calendar to find a mix of paid presenters, movie showings, games, crafts, and wild-card activities for all age groups.  This is exhausting and I haven't reached June and July yet!

I had a major AH-HA moment yesterday, however.  I had a drop-in Lego program, where kids could just come in, have a snack, and play with Legos.  No structure. No rules (except no throwing or putting things up your nose). No guidelines.  No theme.

The Lego bin awaits!

So far, in my humble two months at this branch, this after-school program has been the biggest success story for this age group.  In the hour's time, I had more kids come in than many of my other programs combined.

HUH.

Several parents stayed.  Kids asked when this was happening again.  Moms said they hoped I would do this all summer.  But wait!  I didn't do any prep work for this program!  I did no research or thinking about a theme!  This was on the calendar for only a couple of weeks and was kind-of a whim.

Sometimes the kids like structure.  I have had programs where I ask the kids what they would like to do and they stare back until I say "how about this?" and the program starts.  But not this time.  These kids came to play.  They came to meet up with their friends and just be together after school.  It was about being part of the community they lived and just being kids.  They formed their own groups, made their own stories (and freely shared them, YAY!), and had the best time. 

Lego programs are on my calendar this summer.....three of them.  I won't plan anything else but to have the Legos there and some Icee-Pops.  Maybe we will just have to do this every month after that.  Who knows?  This isn't about Legos, it is about allowing kids to just be kids, to be a part of the library doing something they love, and, after a long day at school, to not be directed in their activities.  It could be drawing or play dough, or sidewalk chalk, or dance - anything that allows kids a little free, unstructured play in their day.  I think it is time for me to think more about free play in the library.  I wonder what else we can do?

As a post script, I saw this excellent post on ALSC twitter feed.  It goes into great detail the concept of Play in the Public Library!  Check it out!

Bookworms Book Club - Green Eggs and Ham!

The Bookworms Book Club just celebrated its one-year anniversary! This book club for Kindergartners through 2nd graders has been such a fun and rewarding program, and I just can't say enough how much I love these little kids!

We celebrated Dr. Seuss' birthday this month with my FAVORITE Seuss book: Green Eggs and Ham!

Of course, we needed snacks.  Like green eggs:

(sugar cookies, frosted white, with a green Mega M&M)

And rainbow Goldfish crackers, because why not?

We also needed awesome eggy nametags:

(These were just drawn free-hand.  I had teen volunteers help me cut out the pieces and I glued them together.)

We always sit and read the book together at the beginning of the meeting.  I think Green Eggs is fun to try to read really really fast, and they thoroughly enjoyed my getting completely tongue-tied several times!

On to the games! I cut out printouts of a bunch of Seuss characters from various books, and pinned the books' titles to our bulletin board.  The kids had to place the characters up on the board with their proper titles.  Some were easy like The Cat in the Hat and Sam-I-Am, while others were less known, such a Thidwick, the Big-Hearted Moose and the Zizzer Zazzer Zuzz from Dr. Seuss' ABC.  They did a great job and helped each other when they weren't sure!

"What's that giant green ham for?", you ask! Why, it's the Seuss version of "pin the tail on the donkey!"  The kids used their egg nametags (with a piece of tape on the back), and "pinned" them to the board.  As a blindfold, I borrowed a big red Sam-I-Am hat from a coworker, and it fit perfectly over the kid's faces.  Even without being able to see, they did a pretty good job!  They had a blast with this and wanted to try it over and over to get their egg closer to the ham!

(This was just drawn free-hand on green paper, and glued on to the "tray," which is white paper, colored gray. This idea came from Seussville.)

We always finish with a craft, and this month they made a set of Dr. Seuss "Memory" cards to play at home.  "Memory" (or "Concentration") is just a simple game where you flip cards over, two at a time, until you find a match.  If your two cards match, you keep them, but if they do not match, you have to flip them back over.  I made these cards myself and printed them on cardstock.  The kids cut them out, and decorated little cardboard boxes (they look like Chinese takeout boxes) to keep them in (We just happened to have these so I used them!).  We had Dr. Seuss stickers and markers to decorate with.  

I searched high and low for a Green Eggs and Ham craft and never found anything I liked for this age group, so I ended up coming up with this myself.  I think the kids enjoyed making it and I like the idea that they went home with a new game to play.

This monthly program is always a blast, and really gets kids excited about reading!  I had 8 attendees this month (this is average), which is a very manageable size.  We had a lot of fun celebrating Dr. Seuss and can't wait until our next meeting! 

Next month we are reading Fancy Nancy Sees Stars by Jane O'Connor.  See you then!

Rubber Band Bracelets, anyone?

Sometime back in December, I bought a bag of rubber bands.  You know, the ones that you can loom all kinds of bracelets and other creations with.  I wanted to see what they were all about.  Soon after I learned my first simple weave, I was in my library when a bunch of teens were milling about and starting to get restless.  I brought them over for a 10 minute lesson and gave them a fistful of bands.  For 15-20 minutes, those kids were not thinking about running around and what they would do to kill time.  Win-Win.

Fast forward to January, and me starting my new job as the sole Children's Librarian in a new village. I made lots of bracelets to wear up my arm, because I knew kids would comment on them.  They did, and I shared my bracelets with them.  Then kids were stopping by my desk for bands.  Then they were teaching me new techniques.  Then they started asking for programs!

So this month, we had a Rubber Band Loom In.  This is a very small community, so 13 girls at an after-school program is pretty exciting.  They marched in with their looms, their cases of bands, and their enthusiasm to share what they knew with each other. "Look what I made!" or "Sit here, Ill show you how" for a solid hour.  I had to kick them out when their parents showed up!

The reason I share what seems to be an obvious idea is this:  For about $1, you can buy 300 bands and 12 clips.  For $10 you can get a loom, instructions, and bands.  You can loom on your fingers, two pencils, or in ways I haven't even tried yet.  The value of the bracelets though, lie in the connections you can make with your pre-teens.  You are showing them the common ground.  You are learning their names, finding out their likes, and allowing them to see you as a cool new friend. Priceless.

I can't wait to do this program again.  New fads are sometimes just that.  Fads.  But fads like this can add so much value to the library, when you see kids so excited to come over, and you see parents so grateful that the girls are laying down their cell phones and actually hanging out and talking to one another.  Very cool.