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: