Picture Book Month!

Hey guys!  November is Picture Book Month.  If you follow this blog, you already know that is the majority of what I talk about and use in story times.  However, there are also a good number of books that are JUST pictures - no words, and I thought I'd feature them today. 

 Picture-only books a little hard to work into story time, but they're a great tool to get kids involved in the story telling process.  There's a lot more that goes on with reading a wordless book than just looking at pretty pictures.  They have to infer and comprehend the plot - and even use their imagination to help fill in gaps. (And - a little bonus - the illustrator is the start of the show.) So here's a few that are great:

Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle.  An adorable book where a girl named Flora (who is in a swimsuit and flippers) meets a flamingo and they go through this copycat game/dance.  Very simple, not much plot, but an entertaining book nonetheless. (The author has another called Flora and the Penguin).

Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie DePaola. There are *some* words in this - an ingredient list in the woman's book and labels on things.  However, if there weren't those things, I think you could still follow the story just fine.  It's a lot like Eric Carle's Pancakes, Pancakes - but without words. A woman wakes up and wants pancakes, but doesn't have any of the ingredients.  So she fetches eggs from the chicken, milks the cow for milk and then churns some for butter.  She goes out to get maple syrup, and when she comes back her animals have eaten the eggs and milk. Eventually yes, she does get pancakes.

Flotsam by David Wiesner.  I LOVE this book.  It is so pretty.  Basically, a boy finds a camera washed up on the beach.  He gets the pictures developed and there are all sorts of crazy pictures from under the ocean - of octopuses in their living room and mermaids and mechanical fish. While the boy is trying to take a selfie with the camera (it makes sense in plot), the camera gets washed away, only to wash up on the shore for another child later. The amount of detail that is in each page of illustration is amazing. The man is a Caldecott winner for good reason. 

Chalk by Bill Thomson.  Three children find a bag of magic chalk on the playground one rainy day. They find out that whatever they draw comes to life.  One draws a sun, the other butterflies, and the third - a T. REX!!!! The children are chased by the T. Rex, and while hiding inside the playground equipment, the little boy draws rain clouds, and the rain washes away the other drawings, making the T. Rex disappear.  They leave the bag of chalk back where they found it. 

There are LOTS more wordless picture books (esp. by Wiesner). Hopefully this inspires you to check some out. :)

Cooking with Kids: Snack Plates

Sometimes I have what I think are brilliant ideas to simplify my programs. Then sometimes I don't plan ahead and I don't have what I need to do said program. Sometimes that happens with the same program.  This was that program.

When I went through and did my list of books that had food in them, there were several that had LOTS of foods, and I thought, "What better way to incorporate kids helping than to do snack plates?"

I had it all planned out, and then a week or so before the program, I realized that one of the books had been on reading lists for school during the summer. Curses! I put myself on hold for it, but it didn't come in until AFTER I did my program.  Figures.  I had to scramble the day before and try to find a replacement book/recipe that I could use to fit the theme of snacks.  Here are the books and recipes I wound up using:

Heckedy Peg by Audrey Wood. This is about a mother who has to go to the market, and has to leave her 7 children at home. She very specifically tells them - "Don't do the thing". A stranger comes up to the door, and what do they do? The thing. Stranger is a witch who turns them into food and takes them home to eat them. Mom finds the witch and eventually the witch will give her children back if she can figure out which one is which. She does so by what they asked for from the market. There's a LOT of food mentioned in the book - most of which a lot of children probably wouldn't eat, but cheese and crackers are mentioned, and so we decided to do a ploughman's lunch. You can get really fancy with it, but we didn't - we buttered some crusty bread and had an array of cheeses the children could choose. My grandmother used to have a cheese slicer I used all the time as I kid, but I don't have one now.  I could have had a kid come up and sliced it with a butter knife, but we were trying to be mindful of time. 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Again, lots of food mentioned, especially at the end of the book, but we decided to focus on the fruit. (I'm not going to go through the plot - this book is so famous, you *must* know it). We made little fruit kabobs, but we needed something for the kids to do, so we decided to make a dip for the fruit. Super easy because all you have to do is mix, so I think I asked a three-year-old to come up and help me. And they did such a good job! I think a lot of kids skipped tasting it though because they had no idea what it was - which is weird because they normally LOVE sweets.

The Beastly Feast by Bruce Goldstone. Sooo this was not the book I had originally planned on doing that day. It's cute though, with bears bringing pears,  parrots bringing carrots, mosquitoes bringing burritos, and so on. I figured that carrots would be the best bet, since a lot of kids eat that for a snack anyway. But we couldn't just give them carrots. I mean we could, but this is a cooking class. So I decided to make homemade ranch dressing. Again - this is something that's not *too* hard - a lot of mixing and measuring. There's some herb cutting, but that can be done with scissors. And there's the garlic mashing, but I have a mortar and pestle and so that helps make short work of that. It was delicious, but way different than the bottled stuff. The kids seemed to enjoy it.   

In case you're wondering, the book I originally intended to do was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett. It talks about drifts of cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, and I thought that would be a perfect recipe that EVERYONE could make. That's ok though. There were other books I didn't get to do in this series, and there are other foods mentioned, so I may be able to work it in some other time.  

Spaaaaaace

I think we introduced this one during the Dream Big summer theme. We liked it so much, we decided to try to incorporate it more into our yearly rotation.

 

Krong! By Garry Parsons. When the kid in the story is approached by an alien in the story and the kid doesn't understand him, he runs inside to tell his parents and they offer the most helpful advice of maybe he's Spanish, French, Japanese. He tries all those languages and then you find out the alien is the boy's uncle.  Why don't the parents say "Why are you talking to a stranger?! Come inside this minute!"? I guess that would defeat the message of like, cultural acceptance or whatever.  But seriously? There's just some strange guy your son is talking to and you're totally ok with it?  Regardless, it's a cute book.

 

 

Man on the Moon (a Day in the Life of Bob) by Simon Bartram. This is a day in the life of the man in the moon.  He flies up every day, tidies it up, puts on shows for the tourists, and has never ever seen an alien. I usually keep this reserved for my elementary kids.

 

 

Baloney (Henry P.) by Jon Scieszka. Kids really get a kick out of the outlandish excuse for being late, told from the point of view of the little alien - complete with alien slang. It's quite a fun story to read aloud.

 

 

Mousetronaut by Mark Kelly. Somewhat similar to Hedgie in Space, it's about a little mouse that gets to go on a space mission and ends up saving the crew and the mission. The best part? This is actually written by an astronaut! :D  How cool is that? 

 

 

The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers. Y'all should know my love for Oliver Jeffers by now. The story is about an alien and a person who both unexpectedly land and get stuck on the moon. They find each other, and figure out a way to get their vehicles fixed.

 



 

Hush, Little Alien by Daniel Kirk. Obviously a take on Hush, Little Baby. Yes, the whole thing can be sung, and I often do it. I stop and ask questions though, so they don't miss the cute play on words or illustrations.

 

 

It Came From Outer Space by Tony Bradman. When I did a search for this image, I found out this was also the name of an old sci-fi film.  I have no idea if they are similar. In this one, a visitor from space comes to an elementary school. They talk about how weird and ugly it was, and how they couldn't understand what it was trying to say. They take a picture with it and get to see the inside of the spacecraft, and then it's time for the visitor to go. In a Twilight Zone-like twist, you see the picture and see that the class are all aliens, and the visitor is a human.  

 

 

Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! I'm Off to the Moon! by Dan Yaccarino. With simple rhyming text and graphic illustrations, this books goes through one little boy's trip to the moon. It's a short, quick read, so I like to do this one with my two year olds.

 

 

Other good books for this theme are:

 

Astro Bunnies by Christine Loomis.

 

 

Moo Cow Kaboom by Thacher Hurd

 

 

As far as songs or fingerplays, I do Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and in the past I've gone this:

 

 

9 Little Planets (sung to the tune of 10 little Indians)

 

 

One little two little three little planets

Four little five little six little planets

Seven little eight little nine little planets

Orbiting round the sun.

 

I know.  Pluto is technically a dwarf planet, but didn't they add it back recently?  It's so hard to keep up with this crap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cooking with Kids: Breakfast Edition

This week was a little harder to put together the books.  It seems like a no-brainer, right?  Of course there should be plenty of books about breakfast.  We found them, and recipes to go with them obviously, but it was a struggle at first.

 

 

There were a couple of books that we looked at for pancakes, including Eric Carle's Pancakes, Pancakes, but we went with Pancakes for Supper by Anne Isaacs (illustrated by Mark Teague, who we have already established that I love). I remember my grandmother reading me the story Little Black Sambo, and this is a retelling of that set in tall-tale fashion with Western pioneers. I love Anne Isaacs Swamp Angel books, and this one is just as good. (Almost - I really like Swamp Angel).  We made chocolate pancakes from scratch with the children.  Really easy.  All they have to do is measure and dump. If you're feeling brave they can help pour and flip the pancakes too.  We just topped them with a little powdered sugar, but honestly? They really didn't need anything.
 

 

The most obvious choice (to me) for this program was to make green eggs and read Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. (Totally unrelated and random side note: as I was reading back through this, I realized how big of a nerd I am because I originally typed Doctor Seuss instead of Dr. Seuss. Whovians will understand me.) I'll admit, we didn't do any ham, but I don't think that really bothered anyone. With this one I had a set of twins help me with this dish.  They have been coming to my programs for quite awhile now, and man are they a handful.  I let them tag team, so one cracked all one dozen eggs and beat them for me (and no shells ended up in them! :D). Then the other came up and I had her use scissors to cut the herbs up into the eggs (chives and parsley) and add a couple drops of blue food coloring.  That's right, blue!  Remember your color theory, people! I think I let her start to scramble them, but she wasn't too keen on that part, so I finished that up.  The kids were not as keen on this one - mainly because they were a little freaked out at watching the girl cut up "grass" into their eggs.  The ones that tried it enjoyed it though. This is one that we had to make right there in front of everyone.  Most other recipes we do the "magic of TV" trick and have stuff premade so they can sample it.

 

 

Finally, we rounded out with making strawberry shortcake overnight oatmeal, and telling Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Or rather, we did another one of our interactive retellings where we had the kids help us tell the story.  It should be a familiar one to most kids, and it's a good test of comprehension and retention skills. Since I needed strawberries chopped up, I had an older child help me with that part, while I had a younger one help me mix the rest of the ingredients. As with most other recipes, we premade this so it would be ready in time. I had the stuff made in the program for breakfast the next day.  Unfortunately, the girl spilled a *bit* too much salt into the batch, and you could really taste it. :/

 

We were really lucky this summer in that our local newspaper was super enthusiastic about covering our programs. A reporter was here that day, and we had a nice front page, full-color spread about the program. Here's a couple of the photos:

 

 

As my friend Lacey texted to me the morning this came out, I was "hardcore reading that book". Lol.



 



Science Fair Projects

It's that most dreaded time of year again: science fair. My roommate/coworker told me there were kids in this weekend asking for science fair project books.  Which means that soon I'll have to deal with questions like"Where are your books about mascara?" and other such nonsense.  To combat this, help parents and kids understand science fair better, as well as how to research their projects, I came up with a powerpoint presentation that I did for several years.  My internet-fu is not so strong as to let me know how to put the file here for you to download, so instead I'm just putting the text up here for you. Just as good - copy and paste is a wonderful thing. Luckily, this text was all in the handy-dandy handout I made for everyone.

Picking a project:

Make sure you pick something appropriate for your age/grade.  If you pick something beneath your level, make sure you have STELLAR research to go with your project.

Let’s brainstorm:  What are some of your favorite subjects/things?  How can we turn those into a science fair project?

(Interjection not originally in the handout: Really.  Do this. It's a great exercise in creativity. If you have a group of kids, or even if you're just doing this for your own kid, there has got to be a way you can tie science back to an interest of theirs, be it video games, sports, or...boogers.  I don't know! Kids like gross stuff.)

Research:

This is probably the most dreaded part of science fair projects – the research.  But it doesn’t have to be hard if you’re smart about how you do it!

Let’s use an example of testing plant food.  What topics do you think you should research?

If you think you’ll be able to come to the library and find a book about plant foods – specifically the ones you will use, you might as well just beat your head with an encyclopedia – because it will be just as frustrating.

Think about it for a minute.  Why do you think plant food A will do better than plant food B?

The best thing to do in this situation is look at the ingredient list of the two different plant foods.  Is there an ingredient in one that isn’t in the other?

If there is, research that ingredient and its effects on plants.  You can also research the type of plant you will use and see in what growing conditions it does best.  If your plant food is highly acidic/alkaline, you might research that and see if that might affect your plants.

Hypothesis:

Once you have chosen the experiment you want to perform, you have to come up with a hypothesis.  

A hypothesis is a statement in which you tell what you think is going to happen when you perform your experiment.

For example you may do your research and say “I think plant food A will help the plants grow better.”

Materials and Procedure:

What materials do you need to perform your experiment?  For the plant one we need: pots, plants, dirt, water, plant food A, plant food B, sunlight, a ruler and a journal.

How exactly are you going to perform the experiment?  That is what you detail out in the procedure.  

This is how we are going to perform the plant experiment:

1.       Put plant A in a pot with dirt and label.

2.       Put plant B in a pot with dirt and label.

3.       Measure each plant and write down its initial height in the notebook.

4.       Give recommended amount of plant food A to plant A.

5.       Give recommended amount of plant food B to plant B.

6.       Place both plants in sun/shade as needed for type of plant.

7.       Water plants as necessary.

8.       Check back in a week and write down measurements of plants.  Repeat process of feeding plants  for 5 weeks.

Control:

A control is a part of your experiment that does not change.  As you’re starting out, it’s best that most of your elements are “control”.  This is the opposite of a variable – which we’ll talk about in a moment.

A control can also be something you do nothing to.  For example, if you were doing experiments on plant food, the control would be the plant that you only gave water to – no food.  This helps you have a base line on which to compare your data.

Variable:

A variable is a part of your experiment that changes.  In the example of plants, it could be the kind of plant food you’re using or it could be the amount.  However, try to stick to one variable per experiment – at least until you get older.  If you don’t do each of the variables properly, you could mess up the results of your experiment.

But how could that mess it up?

Well, say you were testing different plant foods and amounts, and you gave a lot of plant food A to the first plant, and just a little of plant food B to the second.  If the first plant grows better than the second, what made the difference?  Was it the type of plant food or the amount given?  Because you did both variables at the same time, you can’t really know.

So how do I test multiple variables?

Well, what you could do is get lots of plants.  The first four plants you give plant food A.  Each one gets a different amount.  The second 4 plants get plant food B, with the same amount as the other plants.  That way, you can do a side-by-side comparison of which plant food did the best with which amount of food given.

So what are our controls and what are our variables in this experiment?

Controls: the type of plant used, type and amount of soil used, amount of sunlight, amount of water given, etc.

Variables: type of plant food and amount

Important!

It is very important that when doing your experiment that you keep your controls EXACT.

For example, when you water your plants, make sure it’s all the same water (tap, spring, or distilled) and the same amount.  So if you give a ¼ cup to one plant, make sure you give that same amount to all.  If you don’t measure the water, you may give more water to one plant than the other, and that can affect your results.

Data:

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Data

Qualitative – things you can describe.  As far as the plants go, this is where you could tell if the plants look healthy, wilted, or dead, if they’ve lost any leaves, and if they have good color or any flowers blooming.

Quantitative – these are measurements.  You would put how many inches or centimeters the plants have grown

So which is better?  Either is good, but when doing a science fair project, teachers and judges are usually looking for Quantitative data.  Numbers are great way to prove/disprove your hypothesis

Materials and Procedure :

Remember: When you are doing your board, you have to include what materials and the procedure you used in performing your experiment.  A journal is a good way to keep track of this.

Results and Conclusion:

This is where you summarize what happened in your experiment and draw a conclusion.  For example:  The plants that had plant food A grew .5” taller than those with plant food B.  Plant food A must be the better plant food.

IMPORTANT!

It is OK for your results to be different from your hypothesis.  Sometime things don’t always go the way you expect – that’s why we do science experiments!

IMPORTANT!

For the best results, try to do your experiment several times.  If you do the experiment multiple times, and you get similar results, congratulations!  If you do it multiple times and get different results every time, double check to make sure you did everything the exact same way each time.  It’s ok to have different results, but there should be some consistency after several tries.

Safety

Remember, that you should always take proper safety precautions when doing your experiments.  It never hurts to wear a pair of safety goggles (or barring that – a pair of sunglasses to protect your eyes).

Parents should always supervise or help when knives or other sharp objects are used or when things like the oven or fire or chemicals are involved.

If you think something could be too dangerous – an experiment with firecrackers – don’t do it.  Try to use common sense.  It should help you out most times.

Resources

How-tos/Ideas for projects:

http://www.ipl.org/div/projectguide/

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas.shtml

Fall Craft, part 2: Electric Boogaloo

I was going through all my program photos on Facebook, when I found more of my fall crafts (most of these from last year). I don't know when the ones I showed you before were from.  Doesn't really matter.  Anywho, part 2.

Apples. We gave the kids paint (which is always scary) and loofahs to do the leafy parts of the trees.  Then we gave then toilet paper/paper towel tubes and those were the rings for the apples.  Anything else they wanted in the picture, we gave them crayons to draw in, and encouraged them to do that BEFORE painting.

Leaves. This was a totally crazy idea when I thought of it. Did I see it somewhere or did I modify something? I don't know.  We decided to give the kids different kinds of popcorn to glue to the trees to represent leaves. We tried getting the puffed corn pieces rather than popcorn, thinking it would stick better. It didn't. We used cheddar, regular, and caramel, so we'd have yellow, orange, and brown. It didn't turn out too badly.

Fall. This was a fall craft I did AGES ago. I have this small picture-frame die-cut, and I used to use it ALL. THE. TIME. I've calmed down a bit since then. I had made tamales with my friend recently, I think, so I knew they sold the corn husks at the grocery store.  I think the other things are Corn Nuts, and then there's scrapbooking paper that's popcorn print. The corn husks REALLY did not want to be glued down. And gluing the Corn Nuts on top? Not my best plan.  But this looks kinda cute, right?

Owls. Another paper towel/toilet paper roll craft! You just wrap it in paper (which you glue on, of course) and fold in the head.  We gave them stickers to make the eyes and let them draw in pupils. Glue on a beak and some feathers for wings, and you're done!

Pumpkins. This next craft was SO easy and it looks SO good. All you have to so is cut out the pumpkin shape in the paper, and then cut strips of scrapbook paper in whatever colors you want. We stuck with golds/oranges because duh, pumpkins. The kids may have been a bit confused as to which way the strips had to be facing, but it just took a second to show them and they got it. (Or they had a parent helping them).

Halloween/Bats. I can't remember which this was for last year. Could have been either. We've done some iteration of this craft many times. For polar animals, for Christmas, and now for Halloween. Pretty much you take your bat cut-out, color it with chalk, then place it on the paper, and smudge the chalk off the cutout and onto the paper, so you wind up with the outline.  Or you can do like this girl and take your cutout and make and outline around it, and then smudge that.  Either works. Coloring your cutout means that you don't have any hard lines.

Science!

Last year, the summer theme was Fizz! Boom! Read! Normally, we try to get performers for every Friday. Last year though, we had a couple of Fridays we couldn't fill, and so my coworker and I decided to do science project shows those days.  We weren't crazy about doing them every day/every week with our story time, so we decided to do them in two big chunks with these performances.

We started making lists of all the ones we could do, and came up with two categories: weather and food. We scoured the manual and online and came up with as many as we could. We did research and thought we were prepared. Anything can happen in a program though. :)

Weather was the first one we did.  We ordered A LOT of stuff from Steve Spangler's website. One was the Air-Mazing Kit, where we use the balloons to lift a table (even with a kid sitting on it) and we talked about air pressure. We ordered the tornado tube and talked about how they form. We did an experiment with the UV beads and sunscreen, trying out different levels of protection - and then the kids got to do a craft after. Well two.  They got to make a bracelet with the sun beads (which was a challenge unto itself because they would grab the beads, then forget which color was which, and then have to run outside to see). They also got to play with the photosensitive paper. We had mini water guns, shapes cut from microfilm, and all other sorts of things to place on the paper. The guns and the microfilm were great though because they were transparent enough to make designs show through on the paper.

Other than the kids not being able to tell the beads apart, this program went off without a hitch.  We had A LOT of people show up for it, so there was a bit of crowd control issues when it came to doing the crafts, but everyone waited their turn and got to make one and left happy. 

The second one we decided to go with a food theme, I think because there were a lot of those in the CSLP manual. We did things like blowing a balloon up with vinegar and baking soda (that did not go so well). We make "oobleck", the cornstarch and water solution and talked about non-Newtonian liquids and showed them a video from Mythbusters. (Also - did not go so well when the children played with it afterwards and got it EVERYWHERE)  We played smeller's bingo! They had to pass around cups with scented cotton balls and try to guess the scent and mark it (we told them what it was after a minute).

All that wasn't enough though.  The last day or so before the program, I decided we were going to make homemade ice cream.  We had TONS of Crystal Lite containers that one of my coworkers had saved up (she was a former preschool teacher) and donated to us. So I made the milk, sugar, and vanilla mixture the day before and measured it out into baggies. Then the next day all we had to do was put ice, rock salt, and the ice cream mixture into the containers and shake. 

My coworker knew that the mixture needed to stay in the bag. Obviously. I was not specific enough with my volunteer apparently, because I was running smeller's bingo when I heard a parent say "This isn't going to be any good with the salt in it." I had to stop and ask what they meant. I found out that my volunteer had been opening the baggies and dumping the mixture in with the ice and salt. *facepalm*. So I had to round up as many parents as I could and redo theirs, but luckily we had enough.  To any who may have had salty milkwater and disappointed children, I apologize.  Communication is key. 

Teens Craft Project: Hula Hoops

Every summer I try to have at least one major project that I know will blow them away.  It's really hard to predict my numbers, and that's why I plan for one major one. Sometimes my attendance is as low as 2 - and it's not that we don't do something fun, I just have to save the super-awesome stuff for the big days.

So summer before last I found a tutorial on making your own hula-hoops, and I thought, "I'm going to do that with my teens!" It really is simple to make.  The hardest part is gathering all the supplies.  The second hardest part is the wait the teens had because I had to help them one at a time, so they played Apples to Apples while they waited.

When I started researching this, I found all sorts of stuff. Like about calculating hoop size for your body. We did the standard to the top of your hip - which let me tell you, made all the difference for me.  I'm 6' and *cough* pounds.  Ok, I'm not a small girl - and as such, I need a much bigger hoop!  Makes sense, right?  Once I made it and tried it out, I did so much better than I ever had!  I've never been able to hula-hoop!  It was great!

I didn't have a whole lot of options for decoration in my small town, so I just bought a bunch of different colored electrical tape and let the teens go to town.  Once everyone's hoops were made, the decoration part definitely took some time.  As far as I can tell, everyone loved the craft.

Warning: this is obviously not a cheap program to do.  You *could* charge a few bucks for this program if you needed to, or just even it out by doing other less expensive programs for awhile. Truth be told, I probably spent about $100+ for about 12 teens or so.  Would I trade it for the world?  Never.

Cooking with Kids: No Recipe Needed

Our second (or really third) round of Cooking with Kids programs we did towards the end of our summer this year.  It was to bridge the gap between our 6 weeks of heavy summer programming and our fall schedule. As such, we decided to take it easy on ourselves as much as we could.  So we came up with the No Recipe Needed theme.  Self-explanatory and simple, right? Nothing can ever be simple with us. *sigh*

Stone Soup by Heather Forest. We did not make soup for this.  Sometimes we did recipes for each book, other times not.  This time not. We did read the book though, and it illustrates perfectly how easy soup can be to make. "Take what you got, put it in the pot." Granted, some flavors may go together better than others, but when you're making vegetable soup, you really can't go wrong. I think there *is* a recipe in the back of the book, but you really don't need one.

Curious George and the Pizza by Alan J Shalleck. George goes to a pizza shop, and when the owner has his back turned, decides he can try to make pizzas too. It's a disaster of course, but he makes it up to the owner when he is able to help him deliver pizzas when no one else can.  We did garlic bread pizza for this.  My coworker makes these all the time with Texas toast, but since Publix had a sale where you got a free loaf of bread with the purchase of their garlic spread, we went with that.  A little sauce, cheese, and pepperoni - and boom!  Pizzas!  I had a younger child come up and help me with this since it's such an easy thing to make.

Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin. Dragons love tacos. Dragons love parties. What do dragons love more than both? Taco parties. But they absolutely HATE spicy salsa. There cannot be ANY spicy salsa at the taco party. BAD THINGS will happen. Mild salsa is served, but someone didn't read the label. It says "now with spicy jalapeno peppers".  Uh-oh.... We did little teeny-tiny mini tacos. I had a kid come up and help me cook the taco meat, and then we had them assemble their own in little Tostitos Scoops chips.

This program was almost as popular as the sweets one.  You think these children had been starved for DAYS before coming.  They just kept coming up for more and more food.  There were kids that had sixths, I swear. They weren't children, they were hobbits. Hey - it was less leftovers for me, and I know they loved the food.

The Ocean

It's a little weird to do a post on what feels like it should be a summer theme, but I live in Florida, so a summer theme is anytime really. 

Secret Seahorse by Stella Blackstone. Each page of this book, the seahorse is hiding somewhere and you have to find it. I try to let the kids take turns and show me where it is, but this usually devolves into chaos.  Beautiful illustrations by Clare Beaton.

Papa Fish's Lullaby by Patricia Hubbell.  My problem with lullabies is that I always want to sing them.  I can't remember if I've cracked a tune for this one or not. There are several lullaby books that I read that I just can't get it. Basically this is papa fish calling the kid home as he passes all the other sea creatures.

Just Grandma and Me by Mercer Mayer. Classics have that status for a reason. This book is totally a classic. It's about Little Monster and his grandma's day at the beach, the ups and downs, all told from his perspective.

The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark by Ken Geist. It's another take on the 3 Little Pigs - and we all know how many of those there are out there. This one is cute because in the end all the shark's teeth fall out.  What they don't address is that the shark could just grow new teeth (or they'd move up), but I guess the little fish might be dead by then and he could terrorize new ones. *shrug* I have a great shark puppet from Folkmanis that I use whenever I do this story. The kids love it, but they all want the shark to bite them, and that can get a little out of hand.

Other books good for this theme include:

Over in the Ocean in a Coral Reef by Marianne Berkes

Bored! Bored! Bored! by Jill Newton

Fidgety Fish by Ruth Galloway

I've done a couple of fingerplays with this over the years.  One I tried last year is Did You Ever See a Fishy? (sung to the tune of Did You Ever See a Lassie?)

Did you ever see a fishy,

A fishy, a fishy?

Did you ever see a fishy

swim this way and that?

Swim this way and that way, 

and that way and this way?

Did you ever see a fishy 

swim this way and that?

You can also substitute with words like slide and splash on subsequent verses, but I'm doing good just to teach it to them and get them to sing it with me with the words that are there.

I've also done 5 Little Fishes 

5 little fishes swimming in the sea (wiggle 5 fingers, move arm)

The first fish said, "It's cold to me!" (hug self and shiver)

The second fish said, "It's really deep" (use low voice)

The third fish said "I want to sleep" (yawn and stretch)

The fourth fish said, "I spy a ship" (hand shading eyes)

Fishing boat comes, line goes kersplash! (throw in line)

5 little fishes swim away in a flash (fingers "swim" away quickly)

I found a site that had different wording, but I changed it because I didn't like that they said "pool".  

Fall Crafts

I said I'd go back and add crafts to the themed posts, but instead I just decided to go ahead and make them their own post.  All of the ones shown are what's been salvaged from years past.  I still have yet to make what we're doing this year, so there may be another post coming up.

Apples.  This one was truly pulled out of thin air.  In the past, we'd done things like a wreath made of paper apple cut-outs, but I wanted something different.  I know the kids don't care, and I have different ones from year to year, but still. So I found this or came up with it at the last minute. We pre-cut the holes in the plates as well as cut out the leaves.  All the kids had to do was glue on the tissue paper to color the apple and glue on the leaves.

Owls. In NO WAY do I ever expect anyone else to be able to do this craft during a regular week, but we had the stuff sitting around, so we did.  I had all these pairs of kids sunglasses from something the department was going to do years ago. So popped out the lenses and then hot-glued cardstock in the shape of these giant owl eyebrows onto the top of the frames. The kids glued feathers onto the cardstock, and voila! Owl glasses. I love them, and my adult friends all wanted a pair. 

Pumpkins. Since we try to avoid Halloween and jack o'lanterns with this week, it's a little hard to do crafts with it sometimes. I love doing mosaics, so we've done that a couple years, giving them split peas, barley, and of course pumpkin seeds to use. A LOT of the pumpkin seeds never make it to the paper. Heck, a lot of the pumpkin seeds never make it to the kids. I have to buy an extra pack just for me to eat.

Halloween!  As stated before, I LOVE Halloween! So I'm giving you a two-fer.  First, the ghost.  I think it's pretty straightforward, but if you need directions, you can find them here. We simplified them a bit because we didn't want to cut out as many things, so the eyes aren't layered.

Cotton Swab Skeleton.  Again, to me this looks very self-explanatory.  If you'd like a guide to help you, click here. We did this with our elementary school kids because we felt it was a bit more difficult than the ghost.

Thanksgiving! Luckily, we have die-cuts to help us with this feat! :D A couple of years we've done a banner made of paper turkeys and fall leaves, and the kids wrote things they were thankful for on each.  Last year we decided to make a turkey hat.  Easy with our cut-outs. If you don't have one, ask around. We let people use ours as long as they bring their own paper.

HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS!!!

Last year we decided to switch up our decorations a bit. We used to have these giant Martha Stewart fans hanging in our picture book section. (See below) In junior fiction, we had gigantic spiders and spiderwebs everywhere, and in young adult we had huge scary bat wall clings. So we decided to make everything a bit nicer and prettier and not so scary. (Though I love the scary, trust me)

In our YA area, I decided to do a Dia de los Muertos banner.  I made all these little skull cut-outs, and then my coworker and I had a blast decorating them!

For the picture book section, I found a couple of banner tutorials to try out. The "Happy Halloween" banner I did based on this tutorial I found about using coffee filters. The one in the back (which is hard to see, I know) is mainly using our cutouts of a cat, owl, and jack o'lantern against different backgrounds.  If you want a tutorial, I found one here, but that person gets REALLY in-depth on the process.  I think I may have used it just for the measurements.

Finally, in our junior fiction section, we decided to keep it simple and just went with a ton of hanging bats.  Also - some bats taped to the windows for depth of field or something.  Who is it by?  Martha Stewart, of course.  Though if you look at the bats on her page, and the ones on ours, you can see a noticeable size difference.  I don't know why you'd want them as big as she has them.

Hope you enjoy and maybe use some!  I plan on posting more crafts soon!