August Displays

I chose sports as my theme for August displays. Here is what they looked like:

September Displays

Each month brings new displays, and this month I focused on Library Card Sign-Up Month for kids. Our theme this year is "Put Your Paws on a Library Card", and each library in my city is having a special story time featuring service dogs. Books made into movies is my theme for teens. Here is what they look like:

Community Helpers

I love talking about community helpers, because it really gets the kids thinking about all the people that help them in their neighborhood. Here is what we did tonight in storytime:

Books:
Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathman
Clifford to the Rescue by Norman Bridwell
Here Comes Firefighter Hippo by Jonathan London
Millie Waits for the Mail by Alexander Steffensmeier (my favorite!)

Flannel boards:
Community helper dress up, where there are flannel people in plain clothes, and you dress them in the community helper outfits.

Mailman Colors

Craft: 
I let them pick out which helper they would like to thank. Most wrote thank you cards to their teachers, or to their mail carrier.

Back to School

Ah, the first storytime of the Fall season! It came and went and now we can get going on the next 3 months of programming. Since school started a few days ago, I thought it fitting to have a Back to School themed storytime. Here we go!

Books:
Minerva Louise at School by Janet Morgan Stoeke
How Do Dinosaurs Go to School? by Jane Yolen
Foxy by Emma Dodd
The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School by Laura Murray

Flannelboards:

Template for this Kite Word Family Activity can be found here: http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/KiteWordFamilyActivity.htm






Craft:
We made pencil toppers just like the ones seen here: http://www.sturdyforcommonthings.com/2012/08/back-to-school-storytime/

Ducks and Geese

This week we read funny books about ducks and geese. Books read included:

Duck on a Bike by David Shannon
Do Like a Duck Does by Judy Hindley
Petunia by Roger Duvoisin
Duck in the Truck by Jez Alborough

I used the flannel board "Six Little Ducks" and played the song by Raffi from More Singable Songs. We "quacked" along with the song. I also used "Little Duckling Lost His Voice" and the script for this can be found on page 16 here: http://www.nwcentral.org/files/Beyond%20Books%20handouts%2009.pdf

We finished with a goose made out of hearts. The template and idea came from here: http://www.dltk-holidays.com/valentines/mheartgoose.htm. I used a large heart die cut for the main body and had the kids draw everything else.

Outer Space

Last week brought out of this world books: books about outer space! We read about the moon, stars, and space aliens. We talked about what astronauts do and how they get into space. Everyone seemed to have fun, even though I was pretty ill and sounded like an off-key frog when trying to sing! Here is what this story time entailed:

Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! I’m Off to the Moon! by Dan Yaccarino
Hare and Tortoise Race to the Moon by Oliver J. Corwin
Another Day in the Milky Way by David Milgrim
Green Wilma, Frog in Space by Tedd Arnold

Our first flannel board was called "Five Little Astronauts" and is based on the one found here: https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/projects/trc/2007/manual/pres_space.html. Our second flannel board was one I made based on another blogger's idea titled "If You’re Going to the Moon, Wear Your Boots." I used clip art to create the gloves, boots, and helmet.

The words to this rhyme are:
If you’re going to the moon, wear your boots (stomp, stomp)
If you’re going to the moon, wear your boots (stomp, stomp)
If you’re going to the moon, this is what you have to do
If you’re going to the moon, wear your boots (stomp, stomp)

…wear your gloves (clap, clap)
…wear your helmet (pat, pat)

Our craft came from http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/space/morbit.htm. I used the space shuttle template and attached it to a paper plate. The kids colored the plate to look like Earth.

African Folk Tales

There are several ways you can make an African American Month themed story time: African folk tales, famous African Americans, African animal tales, etc. This year I chose African folk tales and here is what we read:

Who's in Rabbit's House? by Verdi Aardema
The Talking Vegetables by Won-Ldy Paye
Konte Chameleon, Fine Fine Fine! A West African Folktale by Cristina Kessler
Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears: A West African Tale by Verna Aardema

We used the "Head, Body, Legs" flannel board based on the book Head, Body, Legs: A Story from Liberia by Won-Ldy Paye. We also used the "Uwungelema Tree" flannel board. This blog entry has both the story and clip art. We finished up storytime with a dangling spider craft.

Valentine's Day Origami

 

This Thursday I had a pre-teen and teen origami program focused on a Valentine's Day theme.  We had lots of fun projects to make and the hour flew by. I let parents and younger siblings come in the room and I'm glad I did, because I definitely needed some adult help with all the questions kids had. I tried to add a little bit of tech to the program and had two instructional videos, one that I made and one from the internet. The wifi ended up not working in the room I conducted the program in and I had to devote a lot of time to showing kids how to make a multi-petal flower because the internet video would not work. That is something I will have to fix in the future. Otherwise I think they had a good time. Here are the instructions I made:

Valentine's Fun

This Valentine's Day family storytime was full of hearts and cute cards. We read the following books:

The Valentine Bears by Eve Bunting
Love, Splat by Rob Scotton
Louanne Pig in the Mysterious Valentine by Nancy Carlson
Ruby Valentine Saves the Day by Laurie Friedman

We used the flannel board for "Valentine Tree Rhyme" and "Colorful Hearts." Valentine Tree comes from the book Best of Totline and a great example of it can be found here: http://busycraftingmommy.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/valentines-day-flannel-friday/ For colorful hearts I handed out a large amount of different colored hearts and then sang:
"If you have a red heart,
a red heart, a red heart,
If you have a red heart,
put in on the board."
I continued with all the colors until we had no hearts left.

We finished with a heart pop-up card craft.

Chinese New Year: Year of the Snake

Today was all about Chinese New Year! We read two books about Chinese New Year traditions and two books about snakes (this year's animal).  Here they are:

This Next New Year by Janet Wong
Red is a Dragon: A Book of Colors by Roseanne Thong
Class Two at the Zoo by Julia Jarman
My Snake Blake by Randy Siegel

I made a flannel board last year and titled it "Chinese New Year Animal Word Match". I know that I got it from somewhere else, but currently I cannot find my source information. We ended storytime with a snake paper chain craft. More great craft and game ideas can be found here: http://www.dltk-holidays.com/china/index.htm.

Fabulous Fish

There are so many great books about fish and the ocean for kids that it was hard to decide, but for this storytime I went with:

The Pout-Pout Fish in the Big-Big Dark by Deborah Diesen
Rainbow Fish Finds His Way by Marcus Pfister
Way Down Deep in the Deep Blue Sea by Jan Peck
Hooray For Fish!  by Lucy Cousins

We used two flannel boards tonight: Fish With a Deep Sea Smile and Slippery Fish. We finished storytime with a craft: paper plate fish.

Sharing and Giving

This storytime was a bit challenging in that I had to find books that talked about sharing in a short and simple way. No long discussions or boring story lines, as I find some books that are trying to teach lessons can be. Here is what I came up with for family storytime this week:

Llama Llama Time to Share by Anna Dewdney
Bear Says Thanks by Karma Wilson
Martha Doesn't Share! by Samantha Berger
Dot and Dash Learn to Share by Emma Dodd (This is two short stories in one book, best for younger children. To plump it up I asked which type of animal each character was and had them explain why they are named "Tall" (giraffe), "Small" (mouse), and "Big" (elephant).)

To fit with the giving part of this theme, I made and used a version of "My Aunt Came Back" based on the book My Aunt Came Back by Pat Cummings.

We finished with tissue flowers made from dum dum pops and tissue paper. Find instructions here.

Snow

As it so happens, we had snow just this morning, making for a perfect storytime theme! Here is what we read:

Snowbots by Aaron Reynolds and David Barneda

Snowmen at Work by Caralyn Buehner

A Kitten Tale by Eric Rohmann

Scholastic video version of Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson

We used two flannel boards from the library previously made by other children's librarians: "Five Little Snow Pals" and "All You Need for a Snowman." A good description of both of these can be found here: http://www.teaching-tiny-tots.com/toddler-books-five-little-snowmen.html

We finished with a stick snowman craft. I painted the sticks beforehand and put all of the pieces in individual bags so each child could pick up a bag and a box to complete their craft. At my library, we use small supply boxes with crayons and glue inside and the kids use these each time they come. Sometimes I will add scissors or tape to the boxes depending on what they need. I found the inspiration for this craft on Pinterest here: http://pinterest.com/pin/208080445255126723/