Library Lion

There's a cat in the library! And a lion too! 

For our September program I read Dewey: There's a Cat in the Library!
It is a picture book version of the Dewey books, also by Vicki Myron.
The kitten was found in the outside book drop on a cold Janurary morning at the Spencer Public Library in Iowa in 1988. When the staff found him they decided to adopt him and named him Dewey Readmore.
He was loved and cared for by staff and patrons alike;
he also brought worldwide attention to this small town library. 

             


Library Lion is by Michelle Knudsen and beautifully illustrated by Kevin Hawkes. This is a book about a lion visiting the New York City Public Library. The lion is welcome to stay as long as he obeys the rules. No  roaring in the library. The lion came everyday and he is befriended by the patrons and most of the staff until one day he heroically breaks the rule.
A teaching guide is available from Candlewick Press
http://www.candlewick.com/book_files/0763622621.kit.1.pdf

The lion character is taken from the statues Patience and Fortitude leading up to the stairs of NYPL. 

http://www.nypl.org/help/about-nypl/library-lions

The craft was a wireless notebook covered with brown paper bag that was glued on and the spine taped with masking tape. In the center of the notebook I drew a circle as a reference for the lion mane collage that they tore out National Geographic magazines. I had pre-cut the head form and demonstrated how to draw a lion face on it. Their creativity flowed as they ripped and pasted; they were proud of their notebooks and some have commented since that they have been journaling in them. 

 

I could not resist these cute lion cupcakes. 

My sample. I baked the cupcakes the night before and frosted them with a cream cheese frosting that I colored a brownish orange. The mane is caramel popcorn, chocolate chip eyes and nose with pretzel whiskers. I just set it up as a center after they finished their notebook.

 I played Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight) and other cuts from The Lion King at craft time. 

Two Bad Ants

Two Bad Ants

For my Summer Reading Dig into Reading  program I went with an ant theme and read Chris VanAllsburg's book, Two Bad Ants .This is a beautifully illustrated and well crafted book that opens the beauty of language and perspective to the reader. It begins: 

"The news travels swiftly through the tunnels of the ant world. A marvelous crystal has been discovered in a faraway place. The queen of the ant colony declares that the crystal is the most delicious substance she has ever eaten. "

  

Chris VanAllsburg has a informative website that includes a lesson plan from 

Houghtonmifflin. 

http://www.chrisvanallsburg.com/flash.html

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/thepolarexpress/tg/twobadants.shtml

After the book was read, we began our crafts.

They first made a fingerprint ant on a small jewel box.

The next project was to make an ant-sized book to fit in the box. I photocopied and reduced 18 of the illustrations for each child. Their task was to sequence the images in story order.

 I left a wider space on the left side of the picture to allow room to staple the book together.

I gave each of them 2 ants and a sugar cube to fit in their box.

I purchased the ants online at  www.windycitynovelties.com 

Our last activity was to make grape ants. There were plenty of grapes to snack on too.

Here's the model and the results.

I had a guessing jar for the children and the winner was drawn at the end of our program. 

The prize was a gift bag  that included a large ant decal and books. 

I made a spinning funnel, water toy with 2 ants and white Styrofoam bits to simulate the part of the story where they are twirling in the garbage disposal.  I gave those to the winner as well.

Fun times!

Friendship!

Friendship Stories

The four children who attended (again a small group) are my steady crew of younger elementary children. I had also had a fourth grade home-schooled boy who is on the Autism spectrum. 

I was forewarned about his shyness and antisocial behavior;
he started out quietly sitting backward, not facing me as I read. 

I began  with the the book Friends by Mies Van Hout.

He soon turned around and participated 100% with smiles and interesting smart comments.

My artist husband loved this book too, the illustrations are wonderful and show the 

emotional ups and downs of a close friendship (such as marriage).

I also read Hey, Duck! by Carin Bramsen. It is a smart, funny-cute book that I have used at storytimes and the adults really liked too. Its about a little duck who thinks a cat is a duck.
The children laughed, oooh'd and aaah'd through out the book.

 I shared the story of Owen and Mzee through the picture book A Mama for Owen  by Bauer and Butler and the talked through the nonfiction Owen and Mzee books. 

The Crafts

I found some jute at Michael's then pre-measured and cut the color strands for them to
make a simple friendship bracelet. 

I gathered clipboards for the braiding. 

We Fit Together like a Puzzle

We made friendship necklaces too. I colored a puzzle with a silver Sharpie and hot glued the jute cord to the backs. They were set out pairs for the kids to decorate with stickers and adhesive jewels. 

I also had them sign and decorate the rest of the puzzle. 

The small group lent an intimate feel to the program, perfect for talking about friends.

Bag in the Wind

The Book 

I chose this book just because it spoke to me in its unadorned beauty and interconnectedness.

It is an intelligent, poetic story and beautifully illustrated.  See the Booklist review below.

The life of a plastic bag in a landfill is extraordinarily uneventful and long 15,000 years, give or take a few millennia but in this former U.S. poet laureate's first picture book, a beige grocery bag serves an array of inventive uses in but a tiny sliver of that life span. Set against a barren plains landscape, Kooser's circular story follows a plastic bag, the color of the skin of a yellow onion, as it travels in a chain of happenstance from landfill, to tree, to stream, and among the various citizens of a nearby town, including a young girl, a homeless man, and a shopkeeper. The muted, dappled colors of Root's gouache and watercolor illustrations are a perfect complement to Kooser's lengthy, meditative passages, which celebrate not only the virtues of economy and ecology but, moreover, the interconnectedness of all things. An excellent opener for discussions about creative reuse and recycling, the book concludes with an informational author's note.--McKulski, Kristen Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission. The book size was a little smaller than I typically use. I planned to use our real life projector (Elmo Document Projector) to display the images, but there were only a handful of kids registered so I didn't need to be concerned with that. It was very intimate. Audio and Visual  When the children arrived I showed them a youtube video from the movie American Beauty  "the bag scene" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHxi-HSgNPc I hung a grocery bag on a tree limb with a fan blowing on it. My Wind Playlist Windy  by The Associations  Candle in the Wind by Elton John Breezin'  by George Benson Gentle Breeze Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson: Mary had a little Amp In and out the Window by Old Town School of Music: Songs for Wiggleworms Blow me Down The Wiggles Wiggly Wiggly World Blowin' in the Wind by Peter, Paul and Mary Craft: Plastic Bag Flowers The first craft was making flowers from plastic bags and chenille sticks. Bojangles donated bags for the project.  I made a petal template and traced it on to the bags. I cut 5 petals for each flower. The flowers were easy for the children to make. All you have to do is poke the chenille stick through the base of the petal then turn the flower upside down and wrap the petals in tape around the stem.  I also cut out the graphic circles from a Gymboree bag. They poked a hole in the middle of the circle, more circles were layered on and then taped as above.  . Parachutes!!  I pre-cut very thin plastic trash bags for the parachute. I measured 12" of cotton string and cut 4 pieces for each parachute. I folded the plastic into quarters and marked them with a dot. Round stickers were the string's adhesive. The strings were then gathered and pulled into a knot. The girls were able to do this easily. A wooden clothespin was clamped for the weight, and could be decorated to look like a person. The plastic parachute can also be decorated with markers, but we ran out of time. The parachutes fall beautifully.  12" plate on a folded plastic trash bag.  Wrap up The parachutes got some air time at the end while we continued to listen to the music. I handed out a BLOW POP at the end. I Recycle, Reuse, Re-purpose. The parents took interest in the theme and the children enjoyed the program and embraced the story of a plastic bag.  One parent said that she will never look at plastic bag the same way again.  The total cost for this program was under $3.00 for the Blow Pops.

Little Red Riding Hood

I displayed twelve picture book versions of Little Red Riding Hood all featuring wonderful illustrators. My favorite is by Trina Schart Hyman. I had the children vote on the book with their favorite illustrations and that was the book that I would read to the group. The book they chose was illustrated by Christopher Bing and it lent itself very well to sharing as the illustrations are large and finely detailed. 

I've been wanting to do a Little Red Riding Hood program for a while. My main obstacle was deciding what kind of craft to do with the school aged group. After many a Google searches I came up with idea of using a  sequencing story board that was already available from DLTK- growing together. Each of the children received a stack of nine images telling the story of Little Red riding Hood, with their craft materials and they put them in story order. 

http://www.dltk-teach.com/rhymes/littlered/1.htm

Below is the example I showed them and their work. I really should have given them a larger piece of poster board to work with. Although, as is always the goal -- creativity played itself out and the other side of the poster board was used. The pre-cut Red and Wolf  were taped to skewers so they could play with them on their pictures and as shadow puppets at home.

I played  the song Little Red Riding Hood by Freakwater several times during our craft time.

The song is available on the album The Bottle let Me Down

go to Amazon for a free listen and purchase. 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Bottle-Let-Me-Down/dp/B000066JE8

For a treat we watched a portion of Shelley Duvalls's Little Red Riding Hood
from her Fairy Tale Theatre Series
and had a yummy snack of children's wine (sparkling juice), potato rolls and cookies.
A red cape, red hat and a wolf puppet joined us as well. 

Jan-u-BEAR-y

We had fun with BEARS!!! In the center is my very own Mr. Bear. He is 54 years old,  and I enjoyed telling the children all about him. I shared stories from my childhood such as the time I pulled his eyes off and got a red marker to replace them and added a belly button, and how I put my dad's shaving cream on his muzzle and shaved him. I showed them the ruddy scars from the shave, and told all about how I felt so bad later that I drew angel wings on Mr. Bear with a red ink pen and bandaged him up.Unfortunately Mr. Bear is really stinky and worn from so many years of love and storage...

Part of the day's theme was BYOB (Bring Your Own Bear). We had eight children and five of them remembered to bring in their bears. It's a shame that I forgot to take photos of them.  My energy level was pretty low that afternoon, but we had quality time talking and working together. It was a peaceful and relaxed program with library regulars who were just happy to be together.

Both of these books are really good. I usually lean towards humor with the children,

 but these are two serious books that they really liked, almost to the verge of tears, though

fortunately no one broke down. The Teddy Bear by David McPhail  has a homeless man as a main character which brought up a questions about homelessness. I was asked "Why is the man sleeping in the dumpster?" My reply was "Because it is warmer than sleeping on the cold ground."

One True Bear by Ted Dewan is about a boy named Damien who destroys teddy bears. A brave bear  volunteers from "teddy bear headquarters' to become Damien's one true bear.  It is a well constructed story about courage and love and having "the right stuffing". 

We made Bear Paw Cookies. The children wrote their names on their square of parchment paper 

and our helper Martha baked them for us. Here is the recipe:

http://www.duncanhines.com/recipes/cookies-bars/dh/bear-paws

For our art project, I laid out strips of felt, bits of felt, pompoms and glue. I also had cloth scissors available, so I had to be sure to watch the younger children.  Everyone was very careful and responsible.

They made scarves and wraps for their bears. I had paper bags for them to take home their creations and allowed them to take home some extra craft materials. 

The Music

Going On A Bear Hunt - Mr. Eric & Mr. Michael- Yummy Yellow From The Learning Groove

The Bear Went Over The Mountain - Six Little Ducks

Bear Went Over The Mountain- The Bounding Bear- Mother Goose Rocks Vol. 5

Freddy Bear The Teddy Bear - Ralph's World - Ralph's World

Teddy Bears' Picnic- Greg & Steve- Shake, Rattle & Rock

Teddy Bear Picnic- Green Eyed Fleas- Mother Goose Rocks Vol. 5

Light the Night

The Books

 I talked to the the group about being happy and loving as shining from the inside. I compared that to being angry or sad and being dark. I gave examples of "dark me and light me". 

They were amused. 

I sang  Raffi's book This Little Light of Mine and they joined in.

I read David Shannon's The Amazing Christmas Extravaganza ,

a somewhat dark and humorous tale of a dad who gets out of control decorating. 

He ignores his family and angers his neighbors: and later, he sees the light and is redeemed. 

The Star Tree by Gisela Colle is Christmas story about an old, lonely man living in a big city and remembering  holidays of long ago. He cuts stars out of gold paper then takes them out to the countryside and hangs them on a tree where they could shine by the light of the moon. A huge wind comes through the city and tears down the power lines. In the dark, the city people see the the moon, the old man, and the paper stars glowing in light and join him. It really is sweet. The illustrations are primitive and have a very European feel. 

The Crafts

The crafts were very simple. They put self-adhesive jewels on glass votive candle.(Note: There was a light (tee hee) waxy residue on the outside of the glass. In order for the jewels to stick, I cleaned them off with rubbing alcohol) They drew stars on the back of  glitter paper and cut them out.  Most of them were independent and  I loved the different personalities the stars had. 

During the craft and snack time I played 

This little Light of Mine performed by different musicians. 

The Snack

They freaked when I told them we were going to eat lit candles

but, they loved the pretzel sticks and light cheese spread!