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!
I always liked butterflies and it's a perfect theme for a storytime because there are some good butterfly picture books out there and neat crafts to go with them. Butterfly books, activities, and crafts can also work for the general bug theme.
I started off this butterfly storytime by reading Four Friends in the Garden by Sue Heap. Florentina the bear is playing in the garden with her friends when she notices a fluttery butterfly. She is excited to show her friends, but the butterfly keeps flying away. I thought this was a cute and simple story that followed the butterfly theme.
Next, I shared a story using the flannelboard called "A Spotted Caterpillar." This is a story about a hungry caterpillar who eats different colored flowers that make him get the same colored spots all over his body. We had red, yellow, and blue felt flowers and the kids each got a chance to put a colored dot on the caterpillar. Of course at the end of the story, he turns into a beautiful spotted butterfly!
Our next butterfly book was Don't Worry Bear by Greg Foley. This is a story about a bear who finds a friend in a caterpillar but worries that his friend is changing and can't find him. It's a great story to use to simplify the butterfly stages.
We did a simple flannelboard counting and color rhyme with five colored butterflies and then it was on to our last book, Kitten's Big Adventure by Mie Araki. An adorably illustrated kitten finds herself on an adventure after chasing a butterfly.
For a butterfly craft, we made our own butterflies complete with a pipe cleaner antenna and a popsicle stick body. The kids enjoyed decorating their butterfly's wings anyway they liked using markers and crayons.
Spring is finally here!
I was supposed to do the bunny theme the week before, but the area had a terrible rain storm with hail so no one ended up making Family Storytime. It was such an odd feeling because I never had that happen before, but the weather was really terrible. Anyway, I had the bunny theme all ready to go so I decided to carry the theme over to this week.
How can you have a bunny storytime without mentioning their favorite food...carrots? Our first book was Too Many Carrots by Katy Hudson. This is a silly, fun book about sharing and what ends up happening if you don't.
For a flannel story, I told a tale about bunny tails. It's about a fluffy, white bunny who ends up getting his tail dirty while playing outside. It's brown from the dirt, and he wants his tail back to normal but doesn't know which color it should be. Should it be blue like the sky during the day or black like the sky at night? Should it be green like the grass? The kids like saying the colors and telling me if that's the right color for Bunny's tail.
Our next book told us what bunnies dream about in Bunny Dreams by Peter McCarty.
What an imaginative book! The kids took a real interest to this one.
We did a short "Five Little Bunnies" counting rhyme using the flannel board that got us counting as a group.
Our final book was Cat & Bunny by Mary Lundquist. I found the illustrations adorable and the message of including everyone during playtime charming. Some in the group liked pointing out who was Cat and who was Bunny.
For our craft, we made bunnies out of Styrofoam cups and added a cotton ball for a bunny cotton tail. We did a variation on this craft by using a full bunny face printout instead of the kids drawing the face on because I knew it would work out better for my group. They really liked this craft!
