Monday's Topic: Halloween Preschool Craft

  This program started with the story of 13 Days of Halloween by Carol Greene. I think this is a terrific story because it is great for all ages. I have done this book with older kids and they are great at chiming in on the different days once we hit midsong. The younger kids don't join in as much but they definitely love finding the different animals, creatures and items in the book.



   The craft was the Jack O Lantern Paper Craft  http://www.dltk-holidays.com/halloween/mpaperjack.htm
I do not have a sample, but you can get an idea of this craft at the website. The children loved coloring and gluing all the parts together. In addition, I gave them a Halloween coloring sheet to complete.

Tuesday's Book Talk: Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls: Book 2: New Girl at School

   The second entry in this cute series deals with starting a new school and bullying. Allie is excited to start her new school because she met three very nice girls, Erica, Sophie and Caroline, who will be in her class. Also she really likes the teacher, Mrs. Hunter. She has a great time at school until she meets a bully, Rosemary. Allie becomes worried and tries to figure out how to deal with the bully. She feels the one thing you shouldn't do is to tattle, because it will make it worse. She asks family and friends for advice. The somewhat surprising advice she gets at the end, is interesting. The advice will not be revealed, so the ending will not be spoiled. Also a side plot about Allie and her new kitten is discussed in this book. Meg Cabot continues with her funny but endearing portrayal of Allie, her family and her friends. This book is recommended for girls 9-11.

Wednesday's Topic: Toddler Time 10/26 Monster Theme

  Today's storytime theme was Monsters. Recently Katie from Storytime Secrets discussed her Monster storytime. I included two of her recommended selections, Go Away Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley and If You're a Monster and You Know It by Rebecca and Ed Emberley. To me, Go Away Big Green Monster is a classic and I have a child in storytime who really loves this story.

 So the books for today were: Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort  and


Go Away Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley



If You're a Monster and You Know It by Rebecca and Ed Emberley



  This week I forgot my Ipad and I sung all my songs without the accompaniment of a soundtrack. It didn't deter the parents and the kids.

  Favorite songs this week: If You're Happy And You Know It, Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes and Shake Shake Your Hands.

Tuesday's Book Talk: Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster

   This week's review is on a chapter book, Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster. It is the 50th anniversary of the book. Milo, the main character, receives a mysterious gift. It is a phantom tollbooth. He wonders who sent him this strange but intriguing gift. The directions say to put the tollbooth together, get a coin and pay the toll and then proceed. Milo does just that and ends up in a new and unusual land and experiences a number of great adventures on his journey. He meets several endearing and fascinating characters such as: Tock, the Watchdog (who literally is a watch dog), Humbug (a bug character) and Alec (the boy who hangs from the air) who join him on his quest. In addition, he meets several strange characters such as: Faintly Macabre (a which not a witch!), King Azaz the Unabridged of Dictionopolis, King Mathemagician of Digitopolis, Chroma (head of the color orchestra), Dr. Dischord and Dynne and many many more.

  Basically, these characters all represent different aspects that are important in everyday human life, that the book leads us to believe that we all take for granted. Such aspects include: sound, colors, words, numbers and other more abstract concepts. While Milo is off to learn about all this on his journey with his new friends, Tock and Humbug, they must also complete a mission, to find the Princesses Rhyme and Reason, because of course, nothing makes sense without Rhyme or Reason.

  I would recommend this book for children ages 9-12 and believe it would be a terrific choice to read in a classroom. I could imagine all sorts of discussions that could be inspired about this book.

 In this edition, there is an interesting introduction by Maurice Sendak. He mentions that this book is likened to Alice in Wonderland, but I also see comparisions to the Wizard of Oz and even a little of A Wrinkle in Time.

 I will end this review by mentioning my surprise that there has not been a movie made of The Phantom Tollbooth. The 50th anniversary would have been a good time.

Friday's Topic: Information Literacy for Kids

  I just started an information literacy program for kids grades 3-5 at the library. I have learned several very important facts:

1. Information Literacy for Kids may sound like a good name but no one really knows what it is, you can handsell the program but having a catchier name is better. I got some great ideas from PUBYAC if I do the program next time.

2. The Dewey Scavenger Hunt segment game went very well and attracted several kids that were not signed up, so therefore if I do this program, I can disguise it and call it a Dewey Scavenger Hunt and once I get a bunch of kids hooked to that program, they may be willing to come back to learn about the databases

3. One of the databases has games on it. When I mention about coming back for the databases, that would be an important fact to add. Even somehow incorporating some of the game sites from Queens Library website into learning about good websites may work too.

4. Perhaps the timing is not good? I thought having it in the evening would be a good time because parents would be more likely to be able to come too, but I guess they are staying home to cook and watch younger kids? Saturday would be ideal but we are not open on Saturdays.

5. Widening the age range may get more kids

  Here are some positive findings from the first ever information literacy program at my library.

1. As I had mentioned, the kids loved the Dewey Hunt game and that even attracted one of the kids to come for upcoming segments.

2. The kids are willing to learn about the databases if you get them to the program, it is getting them there that is the problem.


 There are two more meetings of this program. I will talk about them in a later blog post.

Thursday's Topic: Halloween Craft 10/19

  For my Halloween craft, for kids 6-11, we did a haunted house collage. On a black piece of paper, the children colored and glued on a haunted house and cutouts of a witch, ghost, cat, pumpkin and bat. They also used foam pieces, sequins and glitter glue to jazz up their creations.  Soon I will post a picture of one. It went very well and considering the weather, the attendance was okay (we had 8 kids). The children had a great time making their creations.

Tuesday's Book Talk: Welcome to Camden Falls by Ann Martin

  Welcome to Camden Falls is the first book in the Main Street series by Ann Martin. This book introduces four girls, Flora, Ruby, Nicki and Olivia. Flora and Ruby are two sisters who recently lost both their parents are going to live with their grandmother, Min. Min is a sweet, energetic woman who co-owns a yarn and knitting store with Olivia's grandmother. Flora and Ruby move into Min's townhome. Olivia, Flora and Ruby's new friend, lives in one of the townhouses near Min. Martin introduces all the inhabitants of the townhouses on the block. Among these people, there is a teenager with Down Syndrome, an old lady with Alzheimers and two teenagers who lost their mother. Martin interweaves these neighbors into Flora and Ruby's story. She also introduces a girl, Nicki, from the wrong side of town, who is introduced to Flora, Ruby and Olivia when she goes to the knitting store with a kindly lady who wants her to learn how to knit.

  Initially, the girls do not get along with Nicki, but an incident that involves a case of mistaken identity brings all four girls together.

  Overall, to me, this book seemed to focus too much on the neighbors and not enough on the four girls. Perhaps this will not be the case in later books in the series. I would recommend this book for girls in 4th-6th grade.

Toddler Time 10/12 and 10/19 Opposites and Jungle Animals

  Sorry I haven't posted here for a while. For the past few weeks I have only been here the maximum of 4 days each week. So I have been trying to complete 5 days of work in that period of time. Now for a little while, I am back to 5 days, I have some time to post.

 The week of 10/12, the theme was opposites.

 Here are the books I read (in addition to Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort)

Big is Big and Little is Little by Patrick Lewis



and

You and Me, We're Opposites by Harriet Ziefert\




The children really liked the You and Me: We're Opposites. The graphics were cute and it was easy for them to follow.

Their favorite songs of the week were: Hokey Pokey and Ring around the Rosie

Overall the turnout has been pretty good!

Toddler Time 10/19: Jungle Animals

 On this rainy, icky day we had a smaller attendance. We had 8 kids instead of our 13-15 kids. The theme was jungle animals. We read (in addition to Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort):

 If I Were a Jungle Animal by Amanda Ellery



and

Monkey Truck by Michael Slack



  The children liked both books but they especially liked If I Were a Jungle Animal, because of the funny predictaments of the main character.

  The favorite songs of the week were: This Old Man, Hokey Pokey and If You're Happy and You Know It.

Tuesday's Topic: Toddler Time Fall Session 1 and Mother Goose session 1

 Last week was the first storytime of the Fall session. The theme was food.  We are going back to having our storytimes in the Cave. This is a new section that was created when the library was renovated with soft seating so children can sit and read or reading/storytime programs can take place in this area ( I posted a picture on the site here but I will post it again on the bottom of this page). This is actually done because we have a program in the fall on Wednesday mornings in the meeting room. I worked in another library where they had so many programs they always did their storytime in the children's room. However, what I like about the Cave, is that it is basically in its own area only partially open to the children's room.  These are the books we read:

Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort

Yum Yum What Fun by Mara Bergman

Jamberry by Bruce Degen

   

   Favorite Songs: If You're Happy and You Know It, Hokey Pokey and Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes

  New Songs: This Old Man and Old McDonald Had a Farm

Monday's Post: Special Topic-Wonderstruck Exhibition and Brian Selznick talk at Queens Museum of Art

 

 I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to view the aforementioned exhibition and listen to Brian Selznick talk about this book, a little about the Invention of Hugo Cabret, and the upcoming movie based on the book. The reason why the exhibition and author talk took place at the museum was because the museum is a "character" in this book. In the Queens Museum of Art, is the Panorama and its featured in the book! Specifically, the Panorama is a life sized model of the 5 boroughs of New York City. The lighting changes during the day and at "night", a number of the buildings are lit up. They are working to have all the buildings lit up. Also there is a little "plane" that goes up and down a string at the JFK and Laguardia airports.

  For all of you who do not know about the book, Wonderstruck,  the main characters visit places all across New York City, specifically The American Museum of Natural History and Queens Museum of Art.  For more information about the book, here is a good review, Wonderstruck Book Review.

 What is unique about this book is that the two main characters are deaf. Brian Selznick explains that he was inspired to have two deaf protagonists when he saw a documentary called Through Deaf Eyes, which was featured on PBS and covers over 200 years of the culture of deaf people.

 Brian Selznick discusses the painstaking process he undertook to complete the book and the illustrations. It took him three years to complete. He explains how he approached Queens Museum of Art to perform research for this book.  There were several interesting experiences during his research. The first was that he was allowed to walk through the model, wearing "hospital booties". Secondly, he was able to go on the top of the roof of the museum.

 He had approached the curator and another staff member of the museum about the exhibition and author talk. This was just before the release of his book on September 13th.

 During this exhibition, you also learn about the history of the Panorama. The Panorama was created during the 1964 World's Fair and designed by Robert Moses. It is 9335 square feet and has 895,000 individual structures spanning five boroughs all built up to the year 1992. The original Panorama had a 9 minute helicopter ride.

 Brian Selznick mentioned that he is excited about the release of Hugo, based on his book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The film is directed by Martin Scorese and stars Jude Law and Ben Kingsley. Brian Selznick though that the movie was very well done and faithful to the book.

 Finally, Brian Selznick signed a movie poster that is now hanging up in the library. I have a picture of it that I will post here soon. I want to make sure I have permission to post pictures from the event. If so, they will be posted soon. It was a great event and I was glad I had the opportunity to be part of such a special occasion. I can't wait to read the book.

Wednesday's Topic: Reading Levels for Kids

 How do you all organize books in your library? We have it basically by age group for fiction and then alphabetical order by author's last name or series title. Then of course the non fiction by Dewey and then some special sections (mainly in Dewey).

 We have picture books, easy readers, intermediates (what do you guys call your beginner readers and beginning chapter books?) these are our names for them, series, paperback fiction, hardcover fiction, graphic novels, mystery, science fiction and fantasy. We have special non fiction sections called: Science Experiments, Parenting, Test Prep, holiday books, Easy science and math, and foreign language books.

Now to further complicate things, I know the schools use some different way to organize their books and catergorize their books in different levels that may not correspond to our organization. Has anyone ever heard of the Fountas and Pinnell Guided Readers? That is what is used to categorize books by levels in the NYC public schools. They go by letter levels and they are supposed to be organized by grade and also reading ability but I am not sure of the exact criteria. We found this out from the parents and only one parent had it in more detail and I had to do research on my own to find out what it means. Do your schools do the same or do they have a different level system? Have they asked you for books based on a different level?

Oops: Belated Blogcation post

 I forgot to mention that I was going on vacation last week and that is why I have not posted. I went to Vancouver, which was very nice. Any of you been there?

 I am going back to a modified version of my pre summer schedule. I will post about programs, Tuesday book reviews and other interesting library news.

 I am going to NYLA (New York Library Assoc.) Annual Conference in November. I am going to try to post from there and if not, I will post reviews when I get back.

Wednesday's Topic: Summer Reading Parties

Sorry it took me so long to post this. I have been trying to plug away at my book order for September, so I finish it by my vacation next week. Here is the recap of my summer reading parties.

Tuesday's party: I decided to do two parties to make it easier for the volunteers and me. The age group of this party was mainly 8-11. We checked off the names of the kids on a list who were expected to attend the party. The party started with children decorating their summer reading certificates. Then we had an organized plan for serving the food and drinks to the kids. The volunteers were great with this. We ensured that the kids made a minimum of a mess by giving out most of the snacks and drinks ourselves. We also made sure we wore gloves. We served ice cream, cookies, chips, chocolate and popcorn. After the food we did our raffle. We had less raffles this year because of the decreased amount of raffle prizes we had this year. The party was a success. At the end, we gave the kids a yellow Queens Library tote bag with several prizes inside.

Thursday's party: This was for the younger kids, mainly 2-7. The party was very similar to the one on Tuesday, except on the certificates for the younger kids, we filled in all the information for them. Otherwise everything was similar to the first party. I was impressed by the volunteers and how well both parties went.

Book Talk: Moving Day (Book #1 in Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls)

  Moving Day is the first book in the Allie Finkle series. Allie is an a likeable 9 year old. She develops a book of rules to help guide her through the difficulties in her life. These difficulties include: differences between best friends and moving. Allie loves her home, school and her life in Walnut Knolls, aside from her tumultuous friendship with Mary Kay. She is upset when she learns she has to move to Pine Heights to an old home. This great book illustrates the story of how Allie eventually accepts the idea of moving to Pine Heights. There are a lot of amusing ancedotes in this book. Children who read this book will be sure to want to read others in the series.

Blog posts this week

  Due to the end of Summer Reading, as you see, I have decreased the amount of posts the past 2 weeks. This week I am just posting on Friday about the Summer Reading parties. Thank you! Also there will be no posts from September 14-20, as I am going away on vacation.

Thursday's Post Topic: End of Summer Special Programs

This week we hosted two special programs , an local author visit and origami with a presenter picked from our Asst. Head of Children's Services for the library system. Both programs were great! I decided I wanted some fun programs to close off the Summer Reading Club, aside from the parties, which are happening next week.

 The first program was the author visit. The author is a friend of mine, Marcia Nass, who is a retired first grade teacher who published her first book. She read her book , "How to be a Bully, Not!" and was terrific with the kids. I loved the story and the way she presented it. The kids enjoyed it! Then she did a related craft with the story. The book she wrote is a picture book about bullying. Basically, the main character thinks he will be cool if he becomes a bully like his brother, but realizes he is actually cool being the nice guy he is. At the end he wears a crown saying "just like me" showing he was happy to be himself. So the kids all decorated crowns and wrote what they liked about themselves.  It is a great book and it has related activities at the end. If anyone is interested, give me your email and I can give you more information. Sadly I did not have any pictures of that program but I will say that the kids looked adorable in their crowns. They really enjoyed themselves and were very creative with the crowns.

 The second program was the origami program. The presenter, Karen Wellington, was great. She did a book talk on "Sadako and the Thousand Cranes". If you don't know this story, it is a bittersweet and heartfeld story about a sick girl who with the help of a friend decides to make 1,000 paper cranes because she heard a legend that the gods will make one feel better if they make 1000 paper cranes. In this book, they explain how to make a paper crane. Since there were a number of little kids, she decided to modify this and have them make a swan instead of a crane. They made two. They practiced on regular colored paper and then made their second one on the shiny colored paper. She was very helpful and also many of the parents came in to help the kids. I even made two of the origami items (shiny paper crane and lotus flowers). The kids loved making the origami and liked the presenter. I would definitely have her again at the library.

Here are some pictures of the origami that was made:

Monday's Post Topic: Summer Reading Post Part II

We'll I'm back and continuing with this topic. Hope you enjoy.

5. For food for the parties, it is easiest for many reasons to get the prepackaged individual chips you can get in bulk in Costco (and candy and cookies too if they have). It is less messy overall and less work.

6. I found an easy way to keep track of the book tallies of the kids who used the paper logs and not the computer system on Excel. It makes adding up the numbers a lot less time consuming. In a unrelated note, this method also helps me when I am doing book ordering.

7. Having many raffles at the party is a big draw and is a great way kill some of the time for Summer Reading.

8. It is good to have two sessions of storytime because it makes it a lot easier to be organized and having a more intimate group (even if that group is 15 kids compared to 30 kids, makes for better participation for the kids).

9. Plan the volunteer schedule way ahead of time. Make sure there is plenty of time to find volunteers and iron out their schedules and it is better to have too many because inevitably at some point one will not show up.

 I am so excited to be in the home stretch. It is kind of funny to see that a number of libraries are already done and some of them are already doing back to school programs.

Friday's Topic: Summer Reading is Almost Coming to a Close: Part I

 As I had mentioned the other day, I am basically finished with the formal programming of Summer Reading. All that I have left is two programs by outside presenters and the parties. I will get to those later. What I want to discuss today is how I felt Summer Reading went this Summer and how I improved from when I first started 6 years ago.

 My first year as a children's librarian, I was working part time as a trainee out in Long Island with several other children's librarians. That was a great way to introduce me to the field and teach me a lot because I learned from the other librarians there. That is not to say that the first Summer Reading I ever did was not without challenges, but it was a lot easier because I had a lot of support from the other staff members.

 Then, the following year I got a job as a children's librarian in Queens. Don't get me wrong, I love my job but it was very challenging at first going from a library with several children's librarians to a library where I was the sole children's librarian. The first summer reading program at this library, I don't know how I got through it. I asked a million questions of my mentor, a talented and terrific children's librarian named Jillian. I was worried how it would turn out but I did not have specific concerns because I did not do it before, I did not know what to expect. I learned some important things that summer:

1. Make sure I plan out how I want to work the waiting list. This took me a few years to figure out because attendance in the summer is unpredictable but even with that, a pattern emerged the last few years. The pattern was that program attendance was strong in the beginning of the summer, but became more quiet later on. My latest idea was to call people and if they didn't come after 2 or 3 times, basically just write them off and let other people come. Also we told the families when we called them that we had a waiting list and if they were not interested to let me know so we could let someone else off the waiting list come. A number of parents were very receptive to this and let me know if they changed their mind about attending for the summer.

2. Make sure everything is planned out ahead and the crafts can be realistically completed. Initially when I first started Summer Reading at this library, I thought I had to have all these elaborate crafts with materials. It turned out those materials were very costly and the crafts were difficult for the children to do. I knew we had a manual but I did not play much attention to it. I learned after the summer, the Summer Reading Manual is my bible and my best friend for Summer Reading. There are so many great ideas in there that are easy and with readily available craft supplies.

3. I do not need to do separate groups for the K-3 and the 4-6 grades crowds. It turned out for my 4-6 grade craft only a handful of kids came. So I turned it into a Summer Reading Craft for school aged kids. I also discovered some collage type crafts which allow the kids to be very creative and are good for K-6 grades kids.

4. Make sure I have everything I need for the party and it is organized well before the party begins. I found it is always difficult to do the party no matter how much experience you have because of space, preparation and time constraints. I learned that though having a lot of volunteers makes it smoother and better organization helped make the party flow better.  One of the most obvious things..have two parties if you have too many kids.

I see this is a long post, so I will continue it on Monday. Enjoy your weekends all!

Wednesday's Post: Last week of Preschool Summer Storytime

  This will be one of the last sessions of Preschool Summer Storytime. Then I will take a much deserved break :) and continue in the end of September my regular fall Toddler Storytime and Mother Goose Storytime. Toddler Time is for ages 2-4 and Mother Goose is for ages 5 mos-2. This week's theme was multiculturalism. We read the following three books:

Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort


                                                                
One is a Drummer: A Book of Numbers by Roseanne Thong

                                                                
Shades of People by Shelley Rotner


   These books were good because they invite children to answer questions about the numbers, colors and people. However, I don't know why, but the kids were not able to concentrate on the books today (more so the last book). I think maybe it is because we had a small group and the content of some of the kids in the group.

   Favorite songs this week: Happy and You Know it, Ring around the Rosie and Hokey Pokey.

   The craft we did today was multicultural dolls. I hope to get a picture up. There were paper doll cutouts with clothes from different countries and the kids got to dress up a few dolls and glue and color the clothes. They had fun. After they did some related coloring sheets.

Tuesday's Topic: Book Talk-Lunch by Denise Fleming

 Lunch is an adorable picture book by Denise Fleming. Denise writes a lot of great books for storytime such as: Mama Cat Has Three Kittens and In a Small, Small Pond among many others. This book is colorfully illustrated and simple enough for kids 2 and up. There is a mouse who loves to eat all sorts of fruits and vegetables. I have a set of plush soft fabric fruit that I use with this story and its a hit. This story is great to use for many concepts such as color and foods. The book is highly recommended for kids 2-5 for storytimes or to be read one on one.

Monday's Post: Summer Reading Craft (last craft in the summer)

  This is the final week of regular Summer Reading programming. Next week we have two presenters coming in, so we have activities, but I am not really running them. The two activities we will have is an author visit and origami. It should be fun.

  For the final craft, we did the theme of Australia and Africa. For Australia, they decorated a boomerang.  For Africa, they made a tribal mask. I hope to have pictures on here soon. They used foam pieces, markers, sequins, and beads for them. They looked great and the kids had fun.

 This is also the final week for children to submit their book logs or printouts of their books. I have a bulletin board where I made cutouts of luggages and children wrote their names on it, when they submitted a book log and they are all over the bulletin board. I worked it out so if they handed in a book log or printout, they get an invitation to the party. One is for kids 1-7 and another is for the older kids. Obviously if there are siblings, they can have the choice of going to one of the parties, whichever is more convenient. Normally, in the past, if there were other kids who did not complete the summer reading club and wanted to go the party, I would have a list of the kids who were invited and let them in first. If there was space, the other kids could stay but they would not get prizes. However, if they wanted I would give them a book log and register them and they could hand it in and get the prizes at a later date. It would be too late for them to do the raffle.

 I have to admit I am so happy it is winding down because even though its fun, it is so tiring. Glad had I some good volunteers to help.

Thursday's Post: Summer Reading Preschool Storytime 5

  Yesterday's theme was food. We did three books related to food and our favorite Seals on the Bus.

These are the three books:

Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort

Today is Monday! by Eric Carle

Lunch by Denise Fleming



Fast Food Gulp! Gulp! by Bernard Waber

   For the Today is Monday book, I did the song version of it with them. For the Lunch book, I had soft fabric large size fruit. I held up each fruit and had them try to guess what it is.

  Favorite songs of the week: Five Little Monkeys, Hokey Pokey, Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes

  I will try to post pictures soon

Wednesday's Post: The Dewey Race

  Yesterday I did a program we did for the first time at the library. We are a member of the Collaborative Summer Reading Program. Our theme this year was One World Many Books. One of the activities in the guide is the Dewey Race. I was going to take pictures but we were very busy and I didn't get a chance for someone to get the camera out of the safe for me.

 If you ever watched the show Amazing Race, you would have a general idea of what this program is like. If you do not know the show, the Amazing Race, basically it is a game show which teams compete in challenges all around the world to get prizes and win a grand prize of $250,000. Obviously we do not have prizes like that at the library, but we had some cute little prizes and lots of fun. Basically the point of this program was to teach the kids about the Dewey Decimal system. I did do an introductory mini lesson about it. It was hard to tell if the kids were taking it in our just anxiously waiting for the event to begin. The ages of the kids at this program were 7-11. I would say though ages 8 and up is better. We had one 7 year old and I don't know if it was because he was confused about some of the challenges or was bored, but he left his partner mid race.

  Instead of visiting different countries and doing different challenges, the children were to visit different parts of the Dewey Decimal system and do different challenges related to certain Dewey Subjects. For example, for the 800s, they had to either read a poem or fill in the blanks in the poem of missing words. Since this was the first time we did the program, certain things do not go as planned. It appeared one of the volunteers was confused about distribution of the pitstop prizes (they had to go to dewey section pit stop and present their "passports"). They gave prizes to each team at each pit stop. They were supposed to give the prize to the first place finisher. This however worked out okay, because more kids were able to get the small prizes. Also, since it was the first time we did this program, the volunteers had some confusion about the challenges and it was hard to get things moving because of the confusion (also on the kids' part too). Now that we "ironed out the kinks", next year, if we do it, it would be easier because I would know how it would go. Obviously I would have to totally change or mildly alter some of the challenges, but it would still work.

 I would definitely recommend this program in the library. Here are the modifications I would make if I did it next year:

1. Make sure the volunteers have a little more training regarding the challenges and prizes.
2. Make sure you have enough supplies for the challenges for all the kids (it was difficult because we had some people attend the last minute), but I would overestimate next time.

Tuesday's Post: Spotlight on the Warriors Series

   About 5 years ago, I started to read the Warriors series by Erin Hunter. I only picked up the first book because it was so popular in the library and I wanted to know more about the series. I instantly fell in love with the animal/adventure series and its protagonist, Rusty/Firepaw. This series is not just for cat lovers (but it sure helps if you do like them :)), but for anyone who likes adventure, family and animal stories. Recommended ages is 9-12, but as I said, people over that age may like it too. I will not give away any spoilers here, but there are several Warriors series that include different members of Rusty/Firepaw's family and the members of Thunderclan and other clans.

  I found the first series to be the best, but they are all good. Not only are there the 4 Warriors series, but graphic novels and special edition books. My personal favorite Special Edition book is: SkyClan's Destiny.

  Erin Hunter is actually the pen name of three women who write the series together. One is the editor who gives ideas and the other two ladies take turns writing the books. Erin Hunter also has another series, Seekers, which is the journey of a group of bears across the Northern US and Northern Canada. It is good but not as good as the Warriors.

  Here is the cover of the first Warriors book. If you haven't read it, please do and I hope you fall in love with Rusty/Firepaw, like I did.

Monday's Topic: Summer Reading Craft Week 5

 This week's craft theme was recyclables. We used materials that you could get for free and can be reused. We made a shell pet and a newspaper puppet. Pictures will follow later. To decorate the newspaper puppet, they used sequins, foam pieces, stickers and markers. The craft was easy to make and they really enjoyed it. After the program was done, they did a connect the dots giraffe handout.

Thursday's Post: Preschool Storytime Session 4

  Yesterday's theme was colors. These are the books we read:


My World of Color by Margaret Wise Brown




Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh



And of course....

Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort

   Seals on the Bus is always a favorite. They love singing it with me. The World of Color was great because I asked children questions about the colors and animals and several of the kids loved responding with answers. The children thought Mouse Paint was cute and several of the same kids responded to the questions about the colors. I am sure the littler ones even though they were not able to or felt comfortable responding, they were taking it all in.

Favorite songs of the week: 5 Little Ducks, Hokey Pokey and Ring a Round the Rosy.

  The craft was a color snake from dltk-kids.com. Kids enjoyed coloring in the snake segments that corresponded to different colors. Below is a sample of the craft.

Tuesday's Post: Book Talk: The Family Book by Todd Parr

    I used this book for my storytime a few weeks ago. I was drawn to this book because I read one of Todd Parr's books before and fell in love with his concepts and illustrations. All of his books have simple brightly colored illustrations. The themes of his book take more difficult concepts and make them more easily explainable to young children. For example, there is a book about peace, the earth and feelings. This book focuses on the different types of families. He focuses on single parent families, gay/lesbian families, families from different countries and many more. This book was popular in the storytime. I highly recommend this book for storytime and for families to read together.

Monday's Topic: Summer Reading Craft Week 4

   There wasn't a formal theme for today's craft. This was partly due to the fact that we had to do the craft out in the children's room because of the book club meeting. I guess if you could pick a theme, it would be the USA. I have picked themes related to different places in the world. We had a craft for the children to decorate "their house". Basically this is a cut out from cardstock paper and they decorated it with markers, beads, stickers and foam pieces. They were very creative and had a great time with this craft. I will post a picture on here soon. After they did the house craft, they did patriotic coloring sheets or word search. Considering we had 17 kids and did this program in the children's room, it went very well.

Day in the Life of a Librarian: Shelsie Style

  I saw on Twitter that there is something called #libday7. I think this means this week, librarians are sharing on their blog and Twitter what the day in the life of a librarian is like. Interesting idea. Here I go for my day in my life. I am going to use yesterday.

10:00 Turn on the computers and get out the materials for my storytime craft at 10:30. Instruct the volunteers how to set up for the program. Print out the sign in sheet for the customers. Help a customer find some summer reading list books. Checked my email.

10:30 Start storytime. The first half an hour is the books and songs. The second half is our craft. The theme was zoo animals. We read: Seals on the Bus, Dear Zoo, Peek a Boo Zoo and Who Hops. We made a paper lion craft from dltk-kids.com. Children had a great time. We also made sure anyone who needed book logs for summer reading was able to receive one and register any remaining families who did not sign up for Summer Reading.

11:30 Make sure the volunteers put everything in the right spot and collect the books and craft from the program and enter the statistics for attendance into the computer. Help two other customers find books on their summer reading lists.

12-1 Lunchtime

1:00 Provide the volunteers with some tasks. They prepared some upcoming crafts and other needed items for programs. They also called the families for the programs for tomorrow. I made sure they could find any item they needed for this task and provide them with instruction.

1:30 I looked to check to see if the pages and volunteers were shelve reading the books correctly. I also helped some customers find some books for the summer reading list. I also checked to make sure our displays and shelves were neat. For shelves that needed revising and needed to be neater, I asked some volunteers to help fix them.

2:00 I created some fliers for 2 upcoming programs and some sign in sheets for these programs. I also checked my email.

2:30 I had the volunteers look through the summer reading prizes and put them in envelopes and label them and put them in a box. I also  I also pulled some books that needed repair and gave them to a page to fix.

3:00 Helped some more customers find summer reading books and help them get on the computer and make sure the printer was working correctly. I also did some research for some programs in September. I received a package from the main library for a teddy bear craft and looked to see how the craft worked. Realized we did not get the whole thing and emailed to find out about the other part.

3:30 Break

3:50 Check to make sure the upcoming crafts that are in envelopes are in a box and labeled. Do some more research for upcoming crafts. Listen to children who bring in their book logs and give them their prizes.

4:00 Help some more customers find books on the summer reading list. Check to see which library pictures I have for the blog.

4:30 Fill out and put up the luggage cutouts with the children's names. These are for kids who brought in a book log this week. Also,organize the bulletin boards to make sure they look neat and nice.

5:00 Give some kids virtual badges on the Summer reading website. Enter in some new names of registrants on the Summer Reading site. Help customers find books for summer reading.

5:30 check to make sure the prizes were in order and see exactly how many we have.

5:40 Check displays again to make sure there are enough books on the shelves. Make sure everything looks neat on the shelves.

5:55 Gather my stuff and leave for the day at 6.

Wednesday's Topic: Last week's Preschool Storytime

Last week's storytime was all about "me".  The books and craft were related to different sorts of people and parts of the body.

Here are the stories I read:

Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort

As mentioned before, this is a favorite of mine to use every storytime session.


From Head to Toe by Eric Carle

   I love Eric Carle's books and use a number of them in storytime. I love how his books all relate to a different sort of theme. This is a great book about the human body and about animals too! The children loved the animals and seeing what body parts they move.


 Whoever you Are by Mem Fox

     This great book had lovely illustrations. Children learned about kids from all over the world. This did not get as much as a response as From Head to Toe.


Favorite songs were: If You are Happy and You Know It, Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes and Itsy Bitsy Spider.

    The craft we did was a self portrait of the kids. You can see my very artistic (NOT :) ) self portrait. They all had fun!

Wednesday's Topic: Preschool Storytime Session

Today's theme for storytime was zoo animals. We read several books. These included:

Seals on the Bus by Lenny Hort

  This is the one book I use for every storytime. It is great because it is a song and a book all in one. I love how interactive it is and the kids always seem to enjoy it.

Who Hops by Katie Davis

  I like this author and follow her on twitter. This book is terrific for learning about animals and it is very funny! I love the silly pictures of the animals.


   Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell

  My mentor and nearby librarian recommended this book and it is always a favorite with the kids. They love the lift the flap concept and trying to guess the animals.


Peek a Boo Zoo by Dian Curtis Regan

  This adorable book also has the lift the flaps and the illustrations are really cute and the kids enjoyed it!

  Some of the kids favorite songs we did this week include: Five Little Monkeys, Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes and Hokey Pokey.

  The craft we did today was a color and glue lion craft. It was one of those great crafts from dltk-kids.com. I will post the photo of the craft on here.

  Next post will include last week's craft.