Family Storytime: Be Thankful

Because of Thanksgiving week, we definitely had a small turnout for storytime but we still had some fun. We were able to fit two books and a flannel board into storytime, as well as our bean bag song.

For our first book, we read Bear Says Thanks by Karma Wilson. I love books by Wilson and this is one of my favorites to read around this time of year.

We took a break from reading and went over our colors and numbers using a turkey flannel board activity. We each took turns putting up some feathers on the bare turkey. They really enjoyed this.

Our last book was The Thank You Book by Mo Willems. This was cut off a little short because the kids were more interested in getting to the craft.

We made a thankful tree using diecut leaves and writing what we are thankful for on each leaf.

Happy Thanksgiving!   

Other Books:

The Thank You Book Mary Lyn Ray

The Thankful Book Todd Parr

Thanks from The Very Hungry Caterpillar

The Thank You Letter Jane Cabrera

Last Stop on Market Street Matt De La Pena

Thank You, Omu! Oge Mora

Those Shoes Maribeth Boelts

There, There Tim Beiser

Splat Says Thank You! Rob Scotton

Being Grateful Bullfrog Books

Grateful: A Song of Giving Thanks John Bucchino

The Thank You Dish Trace Balla

All The World Liz Gartn Scanlon

Thankful Archie Preston

10 Turkeys In the Road Brenda Reeves Sturgis

Other Activities:

Five Fat Turkey Flannel

H.U.M. All Year Long Track 23 The Turkey Hop

Family Storytime: Birthdays

Having a birthday themed storytime was such a great idea! It made everyone excited and was a very fun topic!

The first book I read was Hide and Seek BirthdayTreat by Linda Jennings. This book featured jungle animals who through a surprise birthday party for one of their friends. The pictures were cute and the animals introduced was also a good learning opportunity.

Our first activity was counting candles on our flannel board cake. We went over numbers, counting, and the colors.

The next book I read was Let's Have a Dog Party! by Mikela Prevost. This is a very energetic and chaotic book to read and kept everyone's attention. A little girl wants to have a party for her dog, but her dog just wants quiet. A very adorable picture book.

For our next activity, I handed out color balloons and we each had a turn to put our color on the flannel board. We counted the balloons and then they floated away.

The last book I read was Cupcake by Charise Mericle Harper. The kids loved this book about a cupcake who didn't feel special. The candle's suggestions on what to put on top of cupcake make this book so funny!

We did one more activity and used The Freeze Song off of The Birthday Party CD we have here at the library. We hopped, danced, and tip-toed to the song and froze when their was no music. The kids had a ball!

For our craft, we each made our own cakes and added our age number and the number of candles we need.

This is one of my favorite themes!

Other Books:

Happy Birthday, Moon Frank Asch

A Birthday for Cow! Jan Thomas

Baby Day Jane Godwin & Davina Bell

Happy Birthday, Biscuit!

Messy Besey and the Birthday Overnight Patricia and Fredrick McKissack

Birthday Monsters! Sandra Boynton

Surprise! Sally Noll

Monster's Birthday Hiccups Virginia Mueller

Toddler Art: Yarn

I had two new families join our group for Toddler Art: Yarn so that was definitely a great start to the program. 

I started off by reading our story, Cat Knit, by Jacob Grant. This story is about a cat who loves his ball of yarn, but his owner ends up making him a sweater with it and his yarn isn't so fun anymore. This is a cute story that was simple enough for the toddlers.

Our first craft was using yarn, paint, and glue. We made some process art by first painting using pom poms attached to clothespins, added some glue, and then added some cut up yarn. They had a lot of fun with this and liked playing with the materials.

Our second craft was coloring a cat with yarn just like in our story. We used long pieces of yarn to glue onto the paper and this was simple enough for the toddlers to practice getting used to coloring before some playtime.

Family Storytime: Animals at Night

We started off storytime by doing our bean bag dance and then we talked a little bit about night animals and nocturnal animals.

The first book I read was Secret Pizza Party by Daniel Salmieri. This book was fun and really kept their attention.

Next, we did a flannel board activity using animals and making their sounds. The group was a little shy, but the older boys in the group helped us out.

I read The Very Lonely Firefly by Eric Carle and they really enjoyed seeing the surprise ending with the book lighting up.

For our next activity, I used the book Moonlight Animals by Elizabeth Golding. This book used a really fun effect of using a flashlight piece and lighting up the animals in the pictures. We talked about each animal and the kids thought it was really fun how the book worked.

Our last story was titled Night Animals by Gianna Marino. It was perfect for this theme and had a funny ending.

Our craft was coloring an animal forest wheel and then adding a brad and a flashlight piece on top so that the kids could rotate which animal their flashlight shined on.

I thought this was a good theme, but would have liked to see more flannel boards in our collection that could have been used for it.

Other Books:

Whooo's There? Mary Serfozo

I'm Not Scared! Jonathan Allen

Night Creepers Linda Stanek

The Night World Mordicai Gerstein

Daylight Starlight Wildlife Wendell Minor

Sweet Dreams, Wild Animals! A Story of Sleep Eileen R. Meyer

Creative Writing Workshop: Roll-a-Story

I started off the program by introducing Rory's Story Cubes and explained how they inspire writers and give writers ideas and that there are many ways to use and play with these story cubes.

Once we talked a little bit about the dice, we rolled our dice and started writing. The group had no problem writing and it was great that they took most of the program to write out their stories. I could really see how these cubes helped them come up with what was going to happen in their writing and we all wrote stories together.

We also did some sharing on our stories and rolled our dice a few more times.

About half way through the program, we stopped writing to make our dice. First we made a standard 1 through 6 dice for our roll-a-story blank worksheets and then we made our own story cubes using stickers, diecut pieces, and colored pencils. I think they liked the variety of writing and an art related project.

I told them when the next writing program will be and what that will be about and then I book-talked Brave the Page by Rebecca Stern and Grant Faulkner because this is a great book that will help any young writer.

Favorites, Favorites, Favorites!

I just wanted to write a quick post on some of my favorite books for fall, winter, and just all-time favorites. 

This was a very tough endeavor because there's so many good choices and the possibilities are endless, but I settled on my top five fall picture books, top five winter picture books, and top five all-time favorite books when I was a child.

Top Five Fall Picture Books
Bear Says Thanks by Karma Wilson
We're Going On a Leaf Hunt by Steve Metzger
Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano
Leaves by David Ezra Stein
Mouse's First Fall by Lauren Thompson

I picked these five books because they are wonderful storytime books for fall with beautiful pictures and great messages or silliness. I almost always read these every season for storytimes and they never disappoint. 

Top Five Winter Picture Books
Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner
The Biggest Snowman Ever by Steven Kroll
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! by Dr. Seuss
Bunny Slopes by Claudia Rueda
Let It Snow by Maryann Cocca-Leffler

I picked these five books because they are cute, enjoyable stories to read that are also perfect for storytimes. The Grinch is also one of my all-time favorite children's books.

All-Time Favorite Books (When I was a Child)
Any Garfield comic by Jim Davis
American Girl Books, especially Meet Addy
The Secret World of Alex Mack series
Dear America Series
Goosebumps

These five series were picked because I remember gobbling these books all up as a kid. I'm a huge fan of Garfield and would collect anything Garfield as a kid and would have to keep up with every comic book so I wouldn't miss an issue. I just loved his cattitude!

American Girl books were always a favorite because I could relate to them as a girl and I remember first reading Meet Addy and feeling so much sympathy and emotion for her. Great books to put girls in other girls' shoes and I remember just reading these and feeling like I was there with each character.

The Secret World of Alex Mack was a TV series on Nickelodeon that I loved as a child. She was into science and had magical powers because of it! I of course wanted to read every book. Another character that I could relate to and really pulled me in.

Dear America was one of my favorite series because I enjoyed the idea of reading someone else's diary and all these young girls had journeys and hardships that made their diaries interesting. It was because of this series that I enjoy reading any diary-format books and it also helped instill a love of history as a child.

Goosebumps were a favorite because they were so popular. The feeling of being scared while reading them is what really brought an interest of wanting to read more.

Preschool Picasso: Yarn

I was excited to do this yarn-themed program because I've seen so many good yarn craft ideas for kids online. I based my crafts on the books I've read and we ended up reading two books, one at the beginning of the program and one after our crafts, because we had a smaller group than usual.

For my first book, we read "Little Owl's Orange Scarf" by Tatyana Feeney. This is one of my go-to books for owls and is about an owl who doesn't like his orange scarf his mommy made him. At the end of the book, Little Owl gets a new scarf that he likes much better.

The other book I ended up reading was "Edmund Unravels" by Andrew Kolb. This story was truly a picture book about yarn. Edmund is a ball of yarn who is looking for adventure, but realizes he misses the familiar.

Our first craft of the program was doing some process art using paint and yarn. The group each had their own cups of paint and yarn dipped inside. Once they stirred up the yarn to get it covered in paint, they put that on their cardstock. They could drag the yarn, dab the yarn, try to make designs with the yarn, but the goal was to try a new way of painting that was creative and unique to each child. These turned out fun!

Our next craft was making an owl just like in our first story, but with yarn weaving. Each preschooler was given a card stock owl body that had small slits cut all around it so that they could weave their yarn around the owl body easily and make patterns any way they like. I kept my craft simple by just weaving the yarn back and forth across, but a few of the kids made awesome checkered patterns.

Other Books:

Extra Yarn Mac Barnett

A Bedtime Yarn Nicola Winstanley

A Friendship Yarn Olga Demidova

The Red Wolf Margaret Shannon

Book of the Month: Brave the Page

It is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and I thought it would be a fitting idea to make Brave the Page my Book of the Month. 

Summary: Partly a how-to guide on the nitty-gritty of writing, partly a collection of inspiration to set (and meet) ambitious goals, Brave the Page is the go-to resource for middle-grade writers.

Ages: 10 and up

"Warning: Following the advice in this book will lead you toward achieving big things. You'll write more-and faster- than you've ever written before."

NaNoWriMo Presents Brave the Page: A Young Writer's Guide to Telling Epic Stories is one of the best writing books that was published this year. This book is perfect for a young writer that wants to start writing but doesn't know where to begin. 

I am a big stickler for how non-fiction books are formatted and this book was put together in perfect and simplistic order. I also liked the tone of the book because it comes across as down-to-earth and friendly. 

The book starts off by recognizing the hard work in writing and gives clear points on why the reader should write and how this book will help. 

This is such a well-rounded book for the young writer with tips on how to find story ideas, make a writing deadline, set writing goals, and create a routine so that your writing becomes consistent. 

I also think the writing challenges in the book are extremely helpful and how following the book will set up any writer, young or old, for future success. 

This book is geared to help children find out what type of writer they are and provides writing quests and examples that will ease them into their writing. There's even a progress tracker by weeks and a writing pledge that can be used, along with quick starters and other writing tools. 

Once writers are ready to revise and edit their work, there's a chapter on that too. 

I would like to see more information for children on how to publish their writing, but perhaps that could be NaNoWriMo's next book for children. 

I plan on doing a short book-talk on Brave the Page during one of my upcoming writing programs.