Summer Reading Hiatus

Apologies for the long gap in posts. Our Summer Reading Program began and ate up all my free time. It's winding down now and I hope to be back to posting programs and book reviews soon.

Here's a recap of my summer. I kept the programs simple this year: storytime for ages 0-6, an event for ages 7-12, free movies, twice monthly teen events, and a few pajama storytimes. I'm also hosting a couple of special events in August (Peep Science and Kit: An American Girl Party). I'm still crunching numbers, but it looks like attendance generally increased or remained stable. I'll take it!

I hope to resume regular posts not later than September. Until then, I hope all my fellow librarians and readers have a wonderful rest of the summer.

Flannel Friday Roundup for June 12, 2015

Here's the Flannel Friday Roundup for June 12, 2015.

Kathryn (Fun with Friends at Storytime) has 2 posts this week: Super Heroes Read Books and Family Hero Finger Puppets.

Liz (Storytime Whoopdeedo) shares Five Little Hotdogs. 

Katie (Storytime Katie) has made another set of felt finger puppets: Zoo Animals.

Amy (One Little Librarian) shares an idea for a superhero puppet.

Jane (Piper Loves the Library) shares her library's Common Ground Kits (how she and her library are helping parents and teachers with Common Core standards.)

Laura is hosting the roundup next week.

Important Links:

Flannel Friday Blog

Flannel Friday on Pinterest

Flannel Friday on Facebook

Follow Flannel Friday on Twitter with the hashtag #flannelstorytime.

Our March/April Flannel Friday Fairy Godmother is Lisa.  

Frozen Party

This post is dreadfully overdue! In November, December, & January I held 5 Frozen parties at my 4 library branches. 137 children and 107 adults attended in total.

People are notoriously late to special events. Sometimes they are 15-20 minutes late and as such miss the story portion of the event. To counteract this, for the Frozen party, we did the craft first: painting snowflakes on black construction paper with a mixture of Epsom salts and water. I put the soundtrack on and as the kids finished painting they could sing along.

For the story portion of the party, I read An Amazing Snowman by Barbara Hicks. We also made a snowman on the flannel board.

Then we played a group game: Elsa vs. Anna (basically a Frozen version of red light, green light) and I released them to the other game stations.

Pin the Nose on Olaf

Feed Sven 

Snowball Toss

After everyone had played all the games, they ice skated indoors with wax paper while I prepared the snack. We had Olaf Arms (pretzel sticks), Warm Hugs (Hershey's Hugs), Snowballs (mini marshmallows), True Love's Kisses (Hershey's Kisses), Promises Kept (Dove Promises), and Frozen Punch (Blue Hawaiian Punch & Sprite).

We also had a photo booth so parents could take pictures. Everyone got snowflake stickers and I gave away Frozen puzzles (from Dollar Tree) as door prizes.

These are just the ideas that I found that I could use. I have a HUGE Frozen Pinterest board.

Kaya: An American Girl Party

I wanted to have a Kaya event in November in honor of Native American Heritage Month. I had 2 sources of inspiration for the event: Kelly's Kaya American Girl Club and the All About Kaya Event Kit.

We started off with the Icebreaker Activity from the event kit.

After that I shared some information from Welcome to Kaya's World 1764: Growing Up in a Native American Homeland (Glossary of Nez Perce Words, The Nez Perce Calendar, Ancient Homelands, Play with a Purpose, Dresses from Deer, Adornments), The Nez Perce by David C. King, and The Nez Perce by Nancy Bonvillain.

I had three game options: Fur or Feathers (from the event kit), Pine cones through the hoop, and animal races (both suggested by Kelly...linked above).

For the craft, we made rosettes (from the event kit).

Our refreshments were suggested by Kelly's event: goldfish crackers, fruit snacks, sunflower seeds, and water.

This spring, I had a Julie party (post coming soon!). This fall, I'll be having Kit, Samantha, and Caroline parties. Next spring, I'll be having a Josefina party around Cinco de Mayo. 

Other American Girl Events I've Hosted:
Kit
Molly
Kirsten

Sherlock Party for Teens

My teens love BBC's Sherlock and CBS's Elementary. So last fall, we had a Sherlock Party.

Like all my fandom events, this one included games, crafts, and food.

Refreshments included raspberry ginger ale, cranberry ginger ale, "MyKraft" cheese (although really it was Sargento's) with crackers, and cake donut holes. I found these suggestions on a Sherlock party site. Checkout my Sherlock Party Pinterest board to see more of my inspiration.

I had several options for games:
Sherlock (which is playing Clue & Jenga at the same time)
 

Sherlock Jeopardy (a lovely librarian named Beth Brogden shared it with me)
 

a scavenger hunt using quotes from BBC's Sherlock

For the scavenger hunt, I had the teens using our online catalog, but I think it might have been easier just to send them wandering around looking for the objects. Their prize was mystery flavor Dum Dum pops.

The craft was lotus flower origami.

I also had a book list and book display: "Do You Enjoy BBC's Sherlock & CBS's Elementary? Try These Books?"

Since I've had this event, I have discovered some color your own Sherlock & Watson bookmarks via Teen Think Tank on Facebook.

Sadly neither of the TV series are licensed by Movie Licensing USA. But the following films are: Sherlock Holmes (2009), Sherlock Holmes: A Game if Shadows, Young Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959 & 1981).

Preschool Dance Party

At one of my branches, the regular storytime day is Monday. We miss several storytimes because of bank holidays. Last fall I decided to make up for this by hosting a couple of special events on Friday mornings. A preschool dance party was something I wanted to try ever since I saw Lisa's posts about hers. I also took inspiration from Sarah, Lindsey, and Kendra.

I poured over their posts and set about creating my own preschool dance party. Mine was only 30 minutes long and I didn't use props (scarves, shakers, parachute) as I don't currently have any.

Here's my Playlist:

1. "The Wheels on the Bus" - Pete the Cat version (from a Youtube video)
2. "Finger on Your Head" - Michael & Jello (Monkey See Monkey Do)
3. "Come Dancing with Me" - Mr. Eric & Mr. Michael" (Perfectly Purple)
4.  "Wiggle Your Lah-De-Dah" - Ralph's World (All ARound Ralph's World)
5. "Happy" - Pharrell Williams (G I R L)
6. "The Goldfish" - Laurie Berkner Band (Victor Vito)
7. "I Saw Her Standing There" - The Beatles (Meet the Beatles!)
8. "Bumping Up & Down" - Raffi (Singable Songs for the Very Young)
9. "We Are the Dinosaurs" - Laurie Berkner Band (Whaddaya Think of THat?)
10. "The Monkey Dance" - The Wiggles (Yummy Yummy)
11. "We Will Stomp" - Mr. Eric & Mr. Michael (Tummy Yellow)
12. "Alligator Stroll" - Josh Turner (Sandra Boynton's Frog Trouble)
13. "The Way We Do It" - Greg & Steve (Kids in Action)
14. "Alligator Stomp" - Anna Moo (Anna Moo Crackers)
15. "The Number Dance" - Mr. Eric & Mr. Michael (Rockin' Red)

I had 23 kids and 20 adults show up for my first ever preschool dance party. Everyone seemed to have a good time.

Lesson Learned: Even though I thought I had a good mix of fast and slow songs, I was so wrong. I needed a few more slow numbers to balance out all the fast ones. I look forward to doing this again. I'll probably change up my playlist.

Flannel Friday: 4th Anniversary Guest Post Palooza...Flannel Board Table by Grace

Happy 4th Anniversary to Flannel Friday! To celebrate, we're having a Guest Post Palooza and I have the honor of hosting Grace Smart and her very first Flannel Friday post. Without further ado, here's Grace.

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Flannel Board Table

I have been doing Story Time for 2 years as an assistant to the Youth Services Librarian, and have created dozens of flannel boards during that time to use in StoryTime. I have read on other blogs that some librarians allow their young patrons to get up and interact with their flannel boards DURING STORYTIME. This seems like a great way to engage the kids, but unfortunately we have too many children attending for this to be practical. Nonetheless, I think flannel boards are a great early literacy tool and I wanted to find a way to get our flannels into the hands of our young patrons.

I pondered this idea for a good while, until one day my coworker came across this post by Lisa M. Shaia on Thrive After Three.  

I immediately knew that this was something I wanted to do, so I started brainstorming with my coworkers! We were able to find a flannel table cover for about $10. It’s a green table cover for card games with elastic around the edges, and it was a perfect fit for the small round tables already in our children’s area. We ordered two so that we could switch them out and clean them when necessary. (Hopefully they will hold up in a washing machine.) Once we had the flannel cover, I started working on the first flannel board table for our children’s area. I created the cars and trucks by tracing the outlines of clipart. The roads are simply rectangles of different lengths and sizes (with painted stripes down the middle).  I made the road pieces all different sizes with corners and straight pieces so the kids can rearrange and interact with them.  I used fabric paint for all of the details on all the pieces from tires to road signs and more.

Since this activity seemed like the perfect opportunity to reinforce the early literacy concepts that we promote during each and every StoryTime, I created information cards with talking points for the parents. These I laminated so they would last as long as possible.

Here is my first Flannel Board Table, “Driving Around Town”.

This has been out in the children’s area for over a month. We have found this to be very successful.  All the pieces have been rearranged at the end of each day! And we have had many compliments from parents about this activity.  All of the pieces have held up well at this point even though the roads are starting to be a little wrinkled. I am working on a few new sets of flannels so that I can swap these out in the future to keep things interesting.  Overall, “Driving Around Town” has been a really successful interactive flannel experience for our library.

Thank you, Bridget, for hosting!

Grace Smart

Denton Public Library

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Thank you, Grace, for sharing this great idea with us! 

Mollie is hosting the roundup this week.

Important Links:

Flannel Friday Blog

Flannel Friday on Pinterest

Flannel Friday on Facebook

Follow Flannel Friday on Twitter with the hashtag #flannelstorytime.

Our March/April Flannel Friday Fairy Godmother is Mollie.