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!

So Far Behind on Summer Reading Posts that it's not worth trying

I only wrote posts for two of the six programs that were held during summer reading. Instead of going back and writing each individual post down I am just going to summarize here. This summers theme was On Your Mark, Get Set, READ a health and fitness program. The first week I did miniature golf with the children in the library, using bookends as holes and bringing in a few putters for different size children. The second week we did Nutrition where the children were supposed to guess what is in the bag by smell and where they learned that some foods are good for you and some are not.
The third week I did an obstacle course using pool noodles as jumps and hoops to through stuff through, cones for weaving and giant frisbees to play with. The kids had a blast, and many wanted to do it over and over.
Fourth week I did Ninja Training. This was a different type of obstacle course but it definitely grew on the one the week before. The children made origami throwing stars which they threw through one of three hoops. They then did a mini egg and spoon race, crawled on their bellies and walked across a 2x4 for balance. Finally I used some pool noodles to make samurai swords for the children to play with.
Week 5 was the Science of Sports. We did do all balls bounce? As an experiment.

Last but not least was Week 6 and Horses at the Library! I got a local farm to come with a couple of their horses, one pony and one mini, and let the kids brush them while they learned about the sport of horseback riding. Lots of people came to this one so it was a fantastic way to wrap up the summer.

Coming Soon: Fall Program Posts Coming in October!

Come On Down and Guess That Smell!

So this weeks event was a total bust. I did nutrition with some cereal box puzzles and a Guess That Smell game, and fruit. Unfortunately, all my work was mostly useless as only a couple of kids came and they were little kids that happened to be there for story time. Story time, which was also about nutrition, went great. There were 20 kids in attendance this week. My assistant who runs story time was talking about what foods were good for you versus junk food. It went really well and kids actually answered questions. Only 8 of those kids however came to my actual Summer Reading Program. Sigh. Oh well, can't really do anything about it except be really pumped about the next program which is an Obstacle Course using pool noodles!

Miniature Golfing in the Library!

So it's summer reading time and all librarians know what that means, lots of programs! This year the theme is Sports/Health/Fitness or On Your Mark, Get Set, Read! which makes for lots of fun ideas. For the first week we did miniature golf in the library and had about 12 kids which is pretty good considering we have 45 kids signed up for summer reading.

We got little kids golf clubs and I had two full size putters to use.

I set up the course using books and other items from the library. I used book ends as holes, which made things difficult because of the slight dip up to get the ball in the hole. I used books as obstacles for the most part except for one hole that I used shredded paper as "sand traps". The kids had a pretty good time so I consider this program a win. Next we're doing Nutrition and Food Fun.

City of Ember and How We Survive

Sixth and Seventh grade book club was really fun this week. We discussed The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau which is great book if you haven't read it. It was compared to The Giver and Maze Runner. After the book discussion we played a game of The Worst Case Scenario Survival Game. It gives you topics of worst case scenarios like, what do you do if the breaks go out in your car? and what is the proper way to jump off a train? It then gives you three choices of what to do. Some of them just seem silly while sometimes more then one of them seems possible. You then guess which option is the correct choice. This is a game from 2002, so I didn't come up with it myself, it was something I got when I was in sixth grade myself. But the kids and I had a lot of fun guessing and coming up with our own solutions to the scenarios. This is the last book of the year, can't wait to start again in the fall!