I really liked how my last spring bulletin board turned out, but it was time to take it down and promote the Summer Reading Club, Reading By Design.
I had the idea to use Little Elliot, circus font letters, and pink and blue dots to go along with the promotion iRead has been using. I like the way this turned out, but I have to get better at centering.
It won't be up for long anyway because our library lacks bulletin board space and we will be needing a lot of space to put up names of those who sign-up. What makes this year different is that we will be separating each name by school they attend and will be having them write their name on a book die-cut to be displayed. Of course there will also be a spot for those who aren't old enough to attend school yet and those in private and home school.
Our busy summer will soon be starting!
The Drop-In and Get Crafty: Mother's Day program was held the day before Mother's Day. Even though it was close to the holiday and beautiful weather, I still had a nice patron turn-out.
For the craft that would be for Mom, we made our own flower bouquets using flower die-cuts, straws, and duct-taped toilet paper rolls for vases. The kids enjoyed choosing from different colored flowers and using die-cut hand shapes for a variety. We added a card and some green strips of construction paper to make the bouquet look colorful and full.
I did duct tape each toilet paper roll previously because it would be difficult for most of the smaller kids who attend this group, but they liked picking out their patterns.
It was nice to see dads and other family members bring in their kids to surprise Mom, but we had quite a few moms who enjoyed working on the craft with their kids.
Happy Mother's Day!
I have been keeping the same theme for Toddler Art and Preschool Picasso each month to simplify things and carry one craft over that I think would work for both age groups. We had more flower fun in Toddler Art this week!
Our first craft was making hyacinth flowers using our thumb/finger prints and purple paint. This craft allowed for the kids to get used to the sometimes icky feeling of paint, pressing using their hand-eye coordination, and using repetition for practice. They also glued their leaves and stems onto their construction paper.
Our second craft was to make a colorful flower using tissue paper and a template. My group loves working with tissue paper and they had fun separating the green tissue paper from the other colors to be used for the flower pedals. These all turned out beautifully different with some kids scrunching up the tissue paper or simply laying it on their paper.
Our last craft was a re-use from Preschool Picasso, the 3D flower using Popsicle sticks and cupcake liners. This seemed to be the popular craft out of the three. They enjoyed coloring their stem sticks and picking out their pedal and cupcake colors. It's a nice craft to give as a gift.
Onto choosing a Mother's Day craft for an upcoming program and coming up with the theme for next month's Preschool Picasso and Toddler Art programs.
Happy Spring!
April showers bring May flowers...in Preschool Picasso! We had a flower theme for this month's class.
For our story, I read The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle. What a great classic picture book for our theme. It was the right amount of time I needed for a story and was perfect for explaining the life cycle of a flower. My group listened well and enjoyed this Eric Carle book.
After our story, we started with our crafts. For our first craft, we made a sunflower using bent toilet paper rolls, yellow paint, and some construction paper pieces. The kids did a great job using the toilet paper rolls for stamping. This was great for strengthening hand-eye coordination skills and thought the repetition was helpful too.
For our final craft, we made a flower out of cupcake liners, petal cutouts, and Popsicle sticks. It was interesting to see what color combinations they each picked out for their flower.
I decided not to go with a sensory bin this time around, but story time and craft time kept everyone happy and busy.
Keep blooming!
I like walking by our new picture books and finding one that sticks out to me to read. Together by Emma Dodd captured my eye with it's shiny cover use of foil accents. Dodd once again puts together a great picture book!
Summary: This little sea otter loves spending time with his parent--learning new things, playing together, or even just holding each other. In fact, every day this little sea otter spends with his parent is special, just because they are together.
Age Range: 2-5 years
"We played and laughed together as the sun shone in the sky."
The cover's illustration is so sweet with a parent otter and baby otter holding each other. Not only is this a touching message of the bond between a parent and their child, but shows how it can be more than enough to spend time together in nature. It was a delight to see the silver shininess that was used throughout the book that kids will sure love too.
I also liked how the adult otter wasn't labeled as a mom or dad because by doing so it adds more to it and can be used for both a Mother's Day or Father's Day storytime.
The rhyming text added to this great picture book!
