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.