Mr. Popper's Penguins and playing inside with snow

Last Wednesday the fourth grade book club met to discuss Mr. Popper's Penguins. This book was found to be wildly interesting and a great choice for the group.

Along with the discussion on the book we made snow dough (using hair conditioner and baking soda) to play with and built little snowmen with it. This was lots of fun but very messy. Since its been such an ever changing winter this was a great way to bring the Winter Wonderland indoors on a small scale.

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain and American Sign Language

Wow that's a long title. In teen book club this week we talked about the book The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne. The book was pretty fantastic by everyone's opinion. Because Pierrot and his friend who is deaf speak sign language (French Sign Language to be exact) we learned a little Sign Language ourselves.

Using YouTube we watched several videos about useful terms in sign language as well as some videos on sign language for specific songs such as Carry On or We Are Young, both by FUN.

Overall the teens and I had a great time and can't wait until the next book club meeting where we are going to discuss All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely.

Painting and Making Bear Ornaments

On the first Thursday of every month since October we have been holding Art Club at the library. We also tried something new with programs right after school and having me, the Youth Services Librarian, pick up any children from the K-8 school and walking them across the parking lot to the library.

So far in the our monthly Art Club program we have done Dot Painting, similar to what the aboriginals supposedly did (according to Pinterest) see picture below (if you look closely there is a sea turtle in all those dots):

In November when everyone met we did life size portraits of each child by tracing them and then letting the child fill the outline in with their likeness.

In December we made Holiday Cards which ended with a big mess of cutouts from the shape punches (especially the snowflake one).

Now into the new year; in January we made these adorable bears with ball ornaments and pom poms. Below you will see the one I made which looks like Winnie the Pooh. I added a mouth afterwards when I saw the picture and noticed he didn't have one. Other the kids made two each, mine was the example. 

Can't wait until next month when we will be making CD Art!