Toddler Art: Curious George

We started off Toddler Art with our Curious George board book story, Curious George and the Bunny by H.A. Rey. The toddlers were having a little trouble paying attention, but we got through the story quickly and had craft time.

We had the usual two crafts, but I used two crafts from Preschool Picasso since I had leftovers and thought they were easy enough for toddlers.

There was a paper plate craft where the toddlers had to paint with a big paintbrush or clothespin pom pom brown to make Curious Georges' face.

The other two crafts were those  taken from Preschool Picasso. We made The Man in the Yellow Hat's tie and the hand print craft.

The parents enjoyed having these options and the kids had fun playing with our toddler toys after our crafts.

Preschool Picasso: Merry Grinchmas!

I was really excited to put on my first Grinch program and am happy that it went so well and was a part of the Preschool Picasso program. There were so many cute Grinch crafts and ideas, but I knew I wanted to keep the reoccurring theme of one craft using paint and the other being somewhat unique to the other. We read a Grinch book and did our two crafts.

For our book, I read I'm the Grinch by Dennis Shealy. This is one of the newer Grinch books that are out and was a perfect length for a quick story for preschoolers. We talked a little bit about the Grinch and Dr. Seuss and of our favorite characters. This book told us about the Grinch and how he doesn't like Christmas, but of course it ends cute.

Our first Grinch craft was making a happy Grinch using a pre-cut paper plate and shapes. They enjoyed painting his face and I added some white paint to the green so they could color blend and get a lighter green color for our favorite holiday character.

Our second craft was making a grumpy Grinch mask. We colored our masks and added a Popsicle stick so we could pretend to be him. I was pleased to see parents taking pictures of the kids holding up their masks and other project.

Merry Grinchmas!

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

Family Storytime: Fall

This was a nice fall storytime with a great theme that provided a lot of book and activity options.

We started with our bean bag song and then talked a little bit about fall-the leaves, animals, and weather.

Our first book was, We're Going on a Leaf Hunt by Steve Metzger. I always enjoy reading this one for the fall theme because it goes over the colors and the concepts of directions.

This was a perfect opportunity to pull out the tree flannel and add some different color leaves to our tree. We counted each of the colored leaves on the tree and separated them by color.

Next, I read The Busy Little Squirrel by Nancy Tafuri. It's a very cute book about a squirrel who has no time to play because he's getting ready for winter.

Because our book was about a squirrel, I used our five little squirrel flannels and the kids helped counted and liked the rhyme that went with it.

Our next book was Mouse's First Fall by Lauren Thompson. The illustrations are so vibrant in this picture book and it's a cute story that sparks fall conversations with the kids.

We sang "If You're Happy and You Know It" and then read our last book, called Leaves by David Ezra Stein. I love this book's concept about a bear who is confused and concerned that leaves are falling off the trees and shows how bears hibernate for the winter.

For our craft, we used die-cut leaves and traced them with fall colored paint using our fingertips and q-tips, leaving colorful leaf designs on our paper.

Other Books:

When a Tree Grows Cathy Ballou Mealey

Clifford's Puppy Days: Apple-Picking Day Samantha Brooke

Every Autumn Comes the Bear Jim Arnosky

It's Fall Celeste Bishop

The Apple Pie Tree Zoe Hall

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf Lois Ehlert

Watching the Seasons: Fall Emily C. Dawson

Orange as a Pumpkin Molly Dingles

Let It Fall Maryann Cocca-Leffler

Full of Fall April Pulley Sayre

Toddler Art: Apples

For this week's Toddler Art, we continued with the October theme of apples and read one, short apple story and then completed two painting crafts.

We read One Red Apple, but Harriet Ziefert. This book has beautiful illustrations and is simple enough for toddlers.

Once we got done reading and talking a little bit about apples and their colors, we got to making our two crafts.

For our first craft, I put out shower loofahs, card stock, and die-cut tree trunks with their branches. The trunk was glued onto their card stock and then they used the loofah to dip it into green paint to make the leaves on their tree. After this, they used their finger tips to dip into red paint to make the apples on their tree. They got practice with gluing and painting, with the loofah being a fun element.

For our second craft, we made pumpkin prints using apples cut in half, orange paint and stamping them onto our paper. We used our finger tips for green pumpkin stems and for painting grass for our pumpkin patch scene.

Preschool Picasso: Apples

This was a great Preschool Picasso turnout with some new families to the group!

I gave everyone a brief introduction on Preschool Picasso and announced our apple theme. 

We read Apples for Little Fox by Ekaterina Trukhan. This is the cutest story about a fox who loves the library and enjoys reading detective books. He can't wait to solve a real life mystery, but can't seem to see one…until all the apples disappeared on his favorite apple tree. Of course this story has a sweet ending. The group really enjoyed this book and I would definitely use this one again for any apple-related program.

Once we talked a little bit more about the book, I explained our two crafts for the day. Our first craft is usually always our paint craft, so for this one we were going to be using real apples from the library's apple tree to stamp apple shapes onto our cardstock using red, yellow, and green paint. They added on an apple basket by cutting brown construction paper into strips while giving them some cutting practice.

The group's other craft was making a tie-dye apple. I put out red, yellow, and green washable markers on the tables for the kids to doodle on their apple-shaped coffee liner. Once finished, they were to use the spray bottles to spray their apple and make the tie-dye design. Once a little dry, they could glue it onto a construction paper red apple. The kids always enjoy using the water bottle sprays.

Fall is here!

     

Toddler Art: Monet

This was a smaller group for Toddler Art, but with new faces to the library. We read our short board book story, A Picnic with Monet by Julie Merberg and Suzanne Bober, that had pictures of Monet's artwork along with a sweet rhyme throughout.

Our first craft of the day was to make Monet's water lilies painting using a paper plate, blue paint, and pink and green cupcake liners. The toddlers spread and tapped their paint onto the plate by using a sponge and glued on their cupcake lily pad flowers.

The second craft for the program was making Monet's peonies painting. The group was given blue construction paper, green crayons, and red paint. They drew lines down their paper to make the flower stems and then used pom poms attached to clothespins dipped in red paint to make the flowers.

This was good practice socializing, listening, and using their fine motor skills with painting.

Afterwards, we had a little playtime with toys and music.

Teddy Bear Bash!

A teddy bear storytime is always a great choice because there are so many cute books available and everything ties in so well and it was nice to be able to do a teddy bear storytime on National Teddy Bear Day!

I read five books, did two flannel board activities with the kids, and we had craft and snack time.

The Boy and the Bear by Peter Stein was one of our newer teddy bear books in the library and it's a cute story that rhymes like Dr. Seuss about a boy who ends up losing his bear in the mix of meeting all different creatures.

I chose to read I'mAfraid Your Teddy Is In Trouble Today by Jancee Dunn because it was a perfect book about a bear and his stuffed animal friends who throw a party and get into mischief.

Loved to Bits by Teresa Heapy and Katie Cleminson is a sweet story about a bear that gets loved so much that he begins to fall apart, all the while his friend loves him more.

George in the Dark by Madeline Valentine is a story about being brave and a young boy who rescues his teddy from the dark.

Where Is Bear? by Jonathan Bentley is an interactive story that encourages listeners to try and find bear with a funny surprise at the end.

This group was very attentive, but I would have to say that they enjoyed The Boy and the Bear and Where Is Bear? the very best because it really got good reactions from them.

To break the stories up a bit, we helped flannel Teddy play ball by putting up our flannel circles on the board when teddy bear called for a color. Our other activity was telling the story of Brown Bear, Brown Bear together using flannel pieces.

Of course the group was able to make their own teddy bear faces using sponges and paint, paper plates, and heart stickers. We had teddy grahams and apple juice for a treat.

Preschool Picasso: Monet

This was the first program in Youth for the Fall 2019 newsletter without any registration and it went well. I pretty much had around the same numbers as before, but I did see three new families. I didn't need to use tickets and I made extra crafts just in case.

I read the group Philippe in Monet's Garden by Lisa Jobe Carmack. This was a cute, rhyming story about a frog named Philippe and how he came to be in Monet's garden in France where he was painted instead of eaten as French cuisine. The group seemed to have enjoyed the book and were engaged throughout.

For our first craft, we made an inspired Monet craft using paint, construction paper, and coffee liners. The kids used blue paint to paint the background for the pond, added their pre-cut lily pads, and bunched up their coffee filters to make the lily pad flowers. Pink paint was added to their coffee filters to make their flowers more colorful like Monet's.

For our second craft, we made another lily craft using construction paper and coffee filters. We used a different technique of ripping paper to make the impressionist look Monet has in his works. The kids ripped their light blue and dark blue paper in strips and glued them onto card stock to make their pond. They ripped green construction paper to make their lily pads and added the coffee filter and pink circle dot to make their flowers.

The kids liked using paint and being able to rip paper.

Toddler Art: Noodle Art

We had a nice group that had some new faces. The kids did really well listening to Noodles for Baby by Jamie Meckel. This board book was perfect for the noodle theme because it was about babies eating all kinds of noodles and getting messy. The kids thought the messy parts were funny.

For our first craft, we made our own plate of spaghetti using a paper plate with red and brown paint, yellow yarn, and cut out brown circles. We used pom poms attached to clothespins for the one and two years to get a better grip and they swirled their colors together to get "sauce." Then they added their yarn noodles and construction paper meatballs. The group really enjoyed playing with the paint with this one.

For our second craft, we decorated butterflies using colored pasta. The kids practiced their gluing and some of the older kids even made patterns using the different colors. In the future, I would like to try dying pasta with vinegar and try using half-down spaghetti as paint brushes.

This was a fun one and we had some playtime afterwards.

Family Storytime: Camping

Camping is always a fun theme for storytime because there are a variety of good picture books and the kids seem to always enjoy it.

After our bean bag song, we dove into our first and longest book, Scare a Bear by Kathy-jo Wargin. This book rhymes beautifully and is funny enough to keep the kids engaged.

We packed up our cars and headed for our campsite and played a matching car and luggage game on the flannelboard. I handed out different colored suitcases and they each had to match their suitcase to the same colored car. They liked being able to interact with the flannelboard.

Our next book, Into the Outdoors by Susan Gal is a good book with interesting illustrations that explains what it means to go camping. It's also great practice for learning your directional words, such as top/bottom, over/under etc.

For our next activity, we made animal noises. Everyone put up their animal on the flannelboard and we practiced making their noises. We had some pretty silly animals up there that we wouldn't see while camping and we pointed those out.

Do Princesses Make Happy Campers? by Carmela LaVigna Coyle is another rhyming camping book that was enjoyed by everyone.

Once we read that book, we sang and did movements to "A Camping We Will Go," a song I found on Youtube. The group was a little shy to sing and move along, but we all gave it a good try.

Our last book was Maisy Goes Camping by Lucy Cousins. I always seem to pick this book for camping. It's just a great, short read that explains the whole camping experience and has a humor element in it with all the animals not being able to fit inside one tent.

For our craft, we made campfires using orange and yellow paint, our handprints, and brown construction paper for logs and a stick. We even had marshmallows for our craft!

Other Books:

The Great Indoors Julie Falatko

Into the Outdoors Susan Gal

Do Princesses Make Happy Campers? Carmela LaVigna Coyle

Maisy Goes Camping Lucy Cousins

Scare a Bear Kathy-jo Wargin

Camp Rex Molly Idle

First Star: A Bear and Mole Story Will Hillenbrand

Other Activities:

Who Sank the Boat Animal Flannel

Five Frogs

Five Owls

Five Birds

Family Storytime: Picnic

Everyone who came were familiar faces and we had a fun time with our picnic/food theme. 

We followed along to the bean bag song and then I read It's the Bear by Jez Alborough. The group really enjoyed this story about a boy afraid of a bear while he's on a picnic and of the bear being afraid of him. 

Next, we added fruits and veggies to our "picnic blanket" and we went through the names of the fruits and veggies and their colors. Everyone got a turn to put their food on the magnetic sheet pan.

Next, I read The Watermelon Seed by Greg Pizzoli. The kids really do love this book! Everytime I read it, it's a hit and the kids love to laugh about the seed growing in crocodile's belly.  

After this book, we guessed which colored picnic basket had the apple underneath it using the flannel board.

Then we read our third book, Picnic by John Burningham. This book kept the kids attention because it asked to find certain things in the pictures, but I would say this was their least favorite out of the four books.

We made the tallest ice cream cone with our different colored scoops and each had a turn and then we read Muddle & Mo's Worm Surprise. It was fun to see the kids faces when the picnic food would be worms.

We made a watermelon craft using paint. The kids got done with this craft fast, but they enjoyed using paint for a bit.

This was a good theme that had enough to use for just a picnic theme.

Other Books:

We're Going on a Picnic Pat Huchins

Ready for Anything! Keiko Kasza

Freda Plans a Picnic Stuart J. Murphy

Summer Supper Rubin Pfeffer

The Teddy Bears' Picnic Jimmy Kennedy

Other Activities:

-Plastic Food Activity

-Five Hungry Ants Fingerplay

-Stone Soup Story Flannel

-Hungry Caterpillar Flannel

-5 cookies Flannel

-ice cream cone Flannel

-Vegetable Game

-pizzas fingerplay

-Popsicle Flannel

Preschool Picasso: Vincent van Gogh

This program usually has a great turnout, but today's was even better. We read a short story on Vincent van Gogh called Vincent's Colors that had his paintings and his words and then we did two painting crafts inspired by his art.

Our first craft was painting a sunflower portrait. I printed out a sunflower coloring page that looked like van Gogh's "Sunflowers" and they had green, yellow, orange, and brown paint to paint their sunflower portrait. This gave them practice for painting inside the lines, but the kids could paint anyway they liked and blend colors.

Our second craft was making our own Starry Night painting. They were given a blank cardstock paper and blue, yellow, and black paint colors. They painted and blended with their colors and then I showed them how to use a fork to make van Gogh's swirls like in his painting. The kids liked the idea of using the fork.

I really enjoyed this one and announcements were made about the Lunch in the Library program.

Other books:

In the Garden with Van Gogh Julie Merberg

Katie and the Starry Night James Mayhew

Vincent Can't Sleep Barb Rosenstock

Van Gogh and the Sunflowers Laurence Anholt

The Artist and Me Shane Peacock

Toddler Art: Nature

My original idea for this Toddler Art was to incorporate nature into craft making like I did with Preschool Picasso, but I wasn't finding too many ideas that would be easy enough and safe for toddlers so I went a more traditional craft route.

We read The Whole Wide World and Me by Toni Yuly. This is a short picture book about a girl who notices nature and realizes she is part of nature too. The group listened very well to the book and then it was time to get to our crafts.

For their first craft, they made dandelions using their finger tips or q-tips and white paint on a pre-printed piece of blue construction paper.

For their second craft, they used tissue paper and glued that onto their paper to make a flower.

Both of these crafts used their fine motor skills and gave them different options with paint and tissue paper.

I had a few new children and they did very well with listening to the story and their crafts.

Other Books: 

Because of an Acorn by Lola M. Schaefer

Family Storytime: Earth Day

We celebrated Earth Day by reading a few Earth Day books, doing some related flannels, and completing an Earth-friendly craft.

I started off storytime with our bean bag song and then started reading The Lonely Giant by Sophie Ambrose. I really enjoyed the message in this book because it went perfectly well with Earth Day, but the kids were still very excited so we quickly got through this one and started a flannelboard.

For our first flannelboard activity, I put a flannel Earth on the board and everyone had a different colored rocket to put on the flannelboard. They enjoyed their part of the flannel activity and got most of their antsiness out.

I read The Earth Book by Todd Parr and 10Things I Can Do to Help My World by Melanie Walsh. They seemed to have enjoyed these two books better and then I had them participate in a flannel about compost.

This flannel had a rhyme about five worms and how they recycled into the earth different things such as egg shells and old banana peels. The group liked putting their piece up on the board.

We got to our craft and they were excited to get painting. We used recycled newsletters with a circle drawn on them. The kids painted their earth blue and green and then added a die-cut hand and heart. These crafts turned out really cute and everything was recycled.

Other Books:
Junkyard Mike Austin

The Lonely Giant Sophie Ambrose

Plants Feed Me Lizzy Rockwell

The Curious Garden Peter Brown

From the Garden Todd Ouren

A Boy and A Jaguar Alan Rabinowitz

One Child, One Planet Bridget McGovern Llewwllyn

Junkyard Mike Austin

Rose's Garden by Reynolds

the Gardener by Stewart

Plant a Little Seed Christensen

And the Good Brown Earth Henderson

All the World Elizabeth Garton Scanlon

The Tree Lady Hopkins

Parrots Over Puerto Rico Roth

Other Activities

If You're Happy and You Know It

This Land Is Your Land song with scarve dancing

Preschool Picasso: Paint Like Picasso!

I had a great turnout for this program and it was a fun, unique theme. It was a little bit more of challenge to come up with ideas for Picasso that weren't too hard and books that weren't too long, but there was enough to make it work and a success.

I read Picasso's Trousers by Nicholas Allan. I paper clipped some pages together to make the book even shorter and avoid some of the pictures of Picasso's famous art since it might be too "adult" for the kids.

For our first Picasso inspired craft, we made Picasso faces using paint primary colors and cutouts of different eyes, mouths, noses, and ears. In the book, it is explained that Picasso painted portraits from both the side and the front of faces at the same time, so we did that with our paintings with the help of what I cut out.

For our second craft, we did a Picasso inspired guitar art project using patterned paper squares, a cut out guitar, some string, and a circle. This was a simple cubism art project to focus on Picasso's cubism technique.

A few of the group stuck around to paint some more and I reminded everyone of our time change for next month.

Toddler Art: Story Characters

Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley was the perfect length of book for the toddlers and I was pleased with the craft ideas that were paired along with this book. The kids enjoyed hearing this book read out loud and had the variety of two different types of crafts to choose from or to do both. Both crafts were to make the Big Green Monster. 

One craft involved paint and the other involved tissue paper. All of their crafts turned out really cute and they had fun with the paint. I also liked how this craft allowed them to work with paint differently by smooching their paint around their folded cardstock. It was a different way of working with paint for them. 

Mostly everyone chose to do both crafts, but some parents just wanted to stick with the paper plate and tissue paper monster. 

I also had an opportunity to read the story again to those who arrived late. 

Go Away, Big Green Monster!

 

Toddler Art: Animals

I had some more new, great additions during this morning's Toddler Art program and everyone had a nice time with our short story and two crafts.

I read Karma Wilson's Bear Sees Colors. It's about Bear and Mouse who are friends and encounter different animals and colors along the way. The group enjoyed this one and it was fun to see them get excited about each color.

For our two crafts, we made Bear and Mouse. For Bear, I put paper plates out with dollops of brown paint for them to smear and paint onto their paper plate. We had cut-out ears and noses and sticker eyes to make the rest of Bear.

For Mouse, we used construction paper and yarn for his tail and a pom pom for his nose. I used some different color die-cut leaves to glue onto the background and incorporate the color theme of the book too.

They enjoyed making their crafts and parents helped, but I think next time I'll put out some sponges for the paint so it is a little easier for them to grip than the paint brushes. They can always use their hands and finger paint, but sometimes parents don't like this messier approach.

I liked how this story worked so well with the theme and crafts and this author has such great books for concept themes, animals, and the seasons.   

 

Toddler Art: Transportation

I think the group really enjoyed this transportation theme and we all had a really fun time. They all really enjoyed the story, Beep Beep Toot Toot by Emma Garcia and liked hearing the noises of the cars and some helped with the noises. This was a perfect story for the group because it kept their attention and was short enough for the kids to listen well.

The group enjoyed both crafts, but parents loved the idea of having their kids work with sponges for their monster truck paint craft. The original idea was to use toy cars and make tracks, but that would have been too expensive. Sponges allowed for their fine motor skills to be used and still looked just as neat and "dirty" on their monster trucks. They also enjoyed being able to choose between two colors for each craft. I used some craft scissors to make a tire design around the circles to make the wheels for an added touch.

They enjoy using tissue paper to make their car and this allowed the kids to practice more fine motor skills and using the glue stick. Everyone's craft turned out so cute and the drop-ins that came in wanted to register for next time. I'm always pleased with this group.

Other books on transportation: 
Calling All Cars Sue Fliess

Preschool Picasso: Transportation

Transportation was a really good theme with lots of book and craft options. This would be a good theme for storytime, but great for Preschool Picasso/Toddler Art because there's more sensory activity options with this one.

I had some new faces join the group. We read Number One Sam, a cute picture book about Sam the Dog being in a car race. He's used to being number one and isn't sure how to feel when he doesn't win the race. His friends all love him in the end. I think the group really enjoyed this book and they were eager to start their crafts.

They really enjoyed working with sponges and paint for their airplane sky background and loved the foam car stickers, which we had leftover from a previous program. I'm always happy when I can reuse something we already have.

Everyone's projects turned out cute and it was nice to see the kids interact with each other. 

Other Possible Books:
Cars Rushing! Honking! Zooming! by Patricia Hubbell
Mighty Truck by Chris Barton
Hot Rod Hamster by Cynthia Lord
Moon Plane by Peter McCarty
Toot Toot Beep Beep by Emma Garcia
Moo! by David LaRochelle
Steam Train Dream Train by Sherri Rinker
If I Had a Car by Chris Van Dusen