Libraries 2016

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National Library Week has come and gone again.  We celebrated in storytime by reading books about...you guessed it....libraries!

BOOKS:

We read The Midnight Library by Kazuno Kohara and Book! Book! Book! by Deborah Bruss, illustrated by Tiphanie Beeke.

These are both so awesome.  I read Book! Book! Book! first and the kids all had a great time helping me make the animal noises.  The Midnight Library is sweet and adorable and a nice quieting down book.

PUPPET PLAY:

I made some animal finger puppets to go along with the story I Brought My Frog to the Library by Eric A. Kimmel.  So I told the story and used the puppets to show the crazy stuff all of the animals do in the library.  It really is one of the best books to use for a puppet play.

SONG:

We listened to a new one for me: "Library Song" by Tom Chapin.  

I like the slow start, then the peppy beat after.  We kind of stretched and woke up and then marched in place (I've been kind of obsessed with marching in place lately, not sure why).

CRAFT:

For our craft we made BOOKWORMS!  How cute are these??!!  I just got back from PLA when we did this and so my brain was a working.  I decided that we'd glue the pom-poms on and then do an action song that I "learned" at a PLA session.  It worked like a charm.

The song was "5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" (which obviously I knew, but not with these awesome actions.  We did the sign for monkey, jumped up and down and then fell down like the monkey, shouted for the doctor, and more.  The session was on incorporating more physical activity into storytime and the presenters had compiled a bunch of different physical activity ideas that tie into books on their website Read and Reach.  I definitely recommend that you check that out!  

National Library Week 2015

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We had to take a break from the alphabet to celebrate National Library Week.  Despite an unattended extra evening session, this storytime went fabulously.

BOOKS:

We read A Library Book for Bear by Bonnie Becker and The Midnight Library by Kazuno Kohara.

Both of these books are just darling and perfect for the topic and for reading aloud.  I love Becker’s Bear series.  I love to give Bear a low distinguished voice and Mouse a high squeaky one.  Bear is a good read for children who don’t want to get out of their comfort zone.  The Midnight Library is a charming story about the little librarian and her owl assistants.  I hope she makes another appearance in a Kohara story.  The illustrations are bold lined, clean, and adorable.  I think the color blocking that’s used is genius.  Both of these went over well in storytime.

ACTION RHYME:

We did “If You’re a Reader and You Know It” – modified from “If You’re Happy and You Know It.”  Our verses were clap your hands, stomp your feet, shout hooray and read a book.  Borrowed from Storytime Katie.

SONG:

I had the great pleasure of weeding our board book collection a few weeks ago and I stumbled onto this gem.

Not only is this an awesome board book about the library, it’s also a song.  There’s a note in the front that says that this can be sung to the tune of “The Muffin Man.”  As I am a resourceful library, I looked up the ukulele chords to “The Muffin Man” and typed out the lyrics with the chords.  This was our song for the week.  If you want a copy of song with chords, comment here with your email or you can send me an email and ask: ascherer@egflibrary.org.

CRAFT:

I knew I wanted to do paperbag books, but it took me a little while to figure out what to put inside of them.  I spontaneously came up with some drawing prompts and a few pictures.  Here’s my book.

The kids really enjoyed making their books and they liked the combo of drawing with markers plus gluing.  That seems to be a thing with them.  I don’t mind.  I like drawing with markers and gluing.  I think this is a cute craft that could be used with other topics too.  Easily adaptable.

National Library Week 2014

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I learned a BIG lesson with this one.  We do not have interesting books about libraries in our easy fiction collection.  I tried three different books in the two storytimes I had this week and they all kind of flopped.  Part of it might have been that the Wednesday group was a lot younger and they were super distracted by the baby who had just learned to walk and needed to stand all through storytime. So yeah, I would say that this storytime wasn’t a success, but I’m going to blog about it anyway.

BOOKS:

Mighty Mike Builds a Library by Kelly Lynch, The Library by Sarah Stewart, and I Don’t Like to Readby Nancy Carlson

I chose Mighty Mike because, duh, heavy equipment.  But nothing really exciting happens in the story.  Mike decides to build a library and he does it.  There needs to be some kind of twist where it doesn’t look like the library is actually going to happen.  I picked up I Don’t Like to Read because I love Nancy Carlson and it looked shorter for the toddler audience.  But toddlers can’t read and they don’t get why it’s a thing and the baby was walking around and around and around so this one didn’t catch that much attention.  I really like The Library.  The pictures are beautiful, and the story is near and dear to my heart.  I think I probably would buy books until I couldn’t move around any more if left to my own devices.  Kids don’t care.  They want their action and adventure and this just doesn’t have it.  *SIGH* I’m going to root around and find some books that will work.  I’m not ready to give up on good books about libraries yet.

SONG:

I was super excited about this one.  We sang “These Are My Glasses” by Laurie Berkner.  We did the practice actions at the beginning of the song like she does on the CD and then sang the song all the way through twice.  It was good.   I do think that we could’ve done something with even bigger actions and that would’ve helped them get some of their wiggles out.

CRAFT:

We made…….bookmarks! Of course!  I set out markers and foam stickers and the bookmarks and the kids went to town.  They used more stickers than markers, but that’s okay.  My Wednesday group was still so crazy that half of them didn’t even make bookmarks because they were distracted and wanted to build blocks or walk around or something.

My big takeaway from this week was just let it go.  If they don’t want to make bookmarks, just let them play.  No big deal.  Also I need to get braver and just interrupt a story and start a song.  It goes against my VERY NATURE to do this, but I have to.  It’ll be better for everyone in storytime.  NEXT WEEK is bears so it should be a better time had by all.