STEAM Themed Thursday

We started a new weekly afterschool program.  The three youth librarians take turns planning and running the program each week.  Because of special programs and schedules I finally got to do my first event on Oct 17.

Ramps and Rollercoasters

We had a nice turn out and the kids (an any adults with them) had a great time!

Sesame Street Storytimes

Our local PBS station received a grant to celebrate Sesame Street's 50th birthday in some our our rural communities.  I presented three storytimes at three different libraries on three different Saturdays in October.  We had one of three different Sesame Street characters come to our event:  Cookie Monster, Abby, and finishing up with a HUGE storytime--Elmo!
  
Books
(At each storytime I read two books--choosing from the following depending on the age of the children in attendance)

Elmo's Super-Duper Birthday

by Naomi Kleinberg; illustrated by Joe Mathieu

Love from Sesame Street

by Sesame Workshop

Abby

by Andrea Posner-Sanchez

Can You Tell Me How To Get To Sesame Street?

by Eleanor Hudson; illustrated by Joe Mathieu

Elmo's Book of Friends

by Naomi Kleinberg

Magnet Board Activities

One of These Things

One of these things is not like the other
One of these things just doesn't belong
Can you tell me which thing is not like the other
By the time I finish this song?

(I used random clipart from my other magnet board sets)

Find the Monster

Cookie Monster, Cookie Monster come out and play!
What color house are you in today?

Songs and Rhymes

Elmo is looking all around
Elmo can spin 'round and 'round
Elmos is looking at my toes
Elmo can kiss me on the nose
Elmo is whispering in my ear
What's he saying? Can you hear?
Elmo can hide behind me
But wherever I go, Elmo will find me!

Celebrating Sesame Street
(tune: Old MacDonald had a Farm)

Celebrating Sesame Street

Hip, hip, hip, hooray!

And at the party there were some games

Hip, hip, hip, hooray!

With a run-run here and a run-run there

Here a run, there a run

Everywhere a run-run

Celebrating Sesame Street

Hip, hip, hip, hooray!

And at the party there were some balloons

Pop-pop

And at the party there were some presents

Hip, hip, hip, hooray!

Rip-rip

And at the party there were some candles

Hip, hip, hip, hooray!

Blow

And at the party there was some cake

Hip, hip, hip, hooray!

Yum-yum

Celebrating Sesame Street

Hip, hip, hip, hooray!

Play and Learn

Duckies and Water

Cookie Matching Game

Decorate Party Hats!

Pin the Nose on Elmo

One of these things is not like the other...using Discovery Boxes from Lakeshore Learning

Summer Meals and Stories

I went to three parks this summer to read aloud books while children ate a free lunch provided by the school district. At two of the events the YMCA Day camp was there, which made reading aloud more challenging because not all of those kids actually wanted to hear the books.

JUNE
Valley Mission Park

My Pet Wants a Pet

by Elise Broach; illustrated by Eric Barday

Troll and the Oliver

by Adam Stower

Giant Pants

by Mark Fearing

Falling for Rapunzel

by Leah Wilcox; illustrated by Lydia Monks

Alan's Big Scary Teeth

by Jarvis

Terrace View Park

Big Mean Mike

by Michelle Knudsen; illustrated by Scott Magoon

A Hungry Lion or a Dwindling Assortment of Animals

by Lucy Ruth Cummins

Creepy Pair of Underwear

by Aaron Reynolds; illustrated by Peter Brown

Wolf's Coming!

by Joe Kulka

JULY
Terrace View Park

I'm Bad!

by Kate and Jim McMullan

Carnivores

by Aaron Reynolds; illustrated by Dan Santat

Don't Play with Your Food

by Bob Shea

Max the Brave

by Ed Vere

The Lion Inside

by Rachel Bright; illustrated by Jim Field

Book Tasting Event with 3rd Graders

On Tuesday, May 30th I hosted our first ever Book Tasting event!

If you're not familiar with the idea of "Book Tasting" it is an opportunity for kids to spend a minute or two with a book that has been selected by a teacher or librarian.  After looking at/reading a page or two of the book the child is asked to rate it on how much they think they might want to read it.  Then they move to the next book, spending a minute or two with each book and so forth.  Ideally kids would "taste" at least 20 books and hopefully find at least one that they might enjoy reading.

I pulled in over a 100 books to look through that I thought would be appropriate for 3rd--going into 4th grade.  I tried to get books that would reach all reading levels and hopefully something that would reach each kind of reader.  After looking through the books I developed seven "categories" of books and put 8 books into each category.  I had to pull in some additional books to even it all out.  I was very pleased with the categories and the variety of books--topics, format, reading levels.  (See below for the categories and book list).

Each book got a "flag" of which category it was under so kids could more easily find the book in the menu.  I put the physical books in the same order as they were listed in the menu to also help the kids more readily find the book in the menu.

I had 50 chairs set up with around our meeting room; each chair had one of the books on the menu.  I knew the kids wouldn't get around to all the books, so I put books out that they would see at least three from each category.  All the books in each category in order, then the seven categories in order around the room.  [Animals:  The Big Move, Challenging:  The City of Ember, Graphic Novel:  CatStronauts, Great Author:  Tom Angleberger...]  This helped all of us more easily find the book title on the menu.

The menu was printed on 17x22 paper, folded twice.  Each page had a one category with the book titles listed.  Each title had a face scale for kids to fill in as to how much they think they might like to read the book.

The kids walking over from the nearby school for the Book Tasting!

Here I am explaining  to the kids the process before we head in for the Book Tasting.

The 3rd graders enjoying looking at the first set of books.

A book menu with two books "tasted".  One got a full smiley face (I really want to read this book!) and one smiley face (I think I would like to read this book)

We did about 20 "rounds"--so each student got to see at least two books from each category.  It took longer than I had hoped for each book.  Using tables would have helped, but we just didn't have the room!

My "last minute idea"--that I didn't get to do this year, but hopefully can do in the future, is to offer a free paperback book for any student to brings their Book Tasting Menu back during the summer.  I think our Friends would pay for some books from the Scholastic Warehouse Sale.

After our 20 or so rounds I gave the kids about 5 minutes to walk around the room and look at other books that were available.  Then they had about 10 minutes to browse the library before heading back to school.

A few students enjoying Garfield after the book tasting.

Book Tasting Menu

Animals
The Big Move (Commander in Cheese) / Leavitt
Clover's Luck (Magical Animal Adoption Agency) / George
The Mouse and the Motorcycle / Cleary
A Nest for Celeste / Cole
Obi: Gerbil on the Loose / Delaney
Rescue on the Oregon Trail (Ranger in Time) / Messner
Sasquatch Escape (Imaginary Veterinary) / Selfors
The World According to Humphrey / Birney

Challenging (200+ pages)
The City of Ember / DuPrau
Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library / Grabenstein
Familiars / Epstein
Hercufleas / Gayton
Legendtopia: The Battle for Urth / Bacon
Loser / Spinelli
The Magic Thief / Prineas
The Terrible Two / Barnett & John

Graphic Novels
CatStronauts: Mission Moon / Brockington
The Creepy Case Files of Margo Maloo / Weing
El Deafo / Bell
The Great Pet Escape / Jamieson
HiLo: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth / Winick
King of Kazoo / Feuti
Little Dee and Penguin / Baldwin
Varmints / Hirsch

Great Authors
Tom Angleberger -- Inspector Flytrap
Judy Blume -- Tales of the 4th Grade Nothing
Beverly Cleary -- Ramona the Pest
Andrew Clements -- Frindle
Dan Gutman -- Babe & Me
Gordon Korman -- Swindle
Lois Lowry -- Number the Stars
E. B. White -- Charlotte's Web

Informational
National Geographic Kids Alanac 2017
Can You Survive the Jungle? / Doeden
Guinness World Records: Incredible Animals
It Can't Be True 2 / DK
Kid President's Guide to Being Awesome / Montague & Novak
Orangutan Orphanage / Eszterhas
Some Writer! The Story of E. B. White / Sweet
Together Forever / Quattlebaum

Pairings--Books + Audio Visual
Because of Winn-Dixie (+DVD) / DiCamillo
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (+Playaway) / Dahl
The Cricket in Times Square (+CD) / Selden
The Indian in the Cupboard (+DVD) / Banks
James and the Giant Peach (+DVD) / Dahl
Masterpiece (+CD) / Broach
The One and Only Ivan (+picture book--Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla / Applegate
Stubby the War Dog (+CD) / Bausum

Series
39 Clues / various
43 Old Cemetery Road / Klise
Billy Sure: Kid Entrepreneur / Sharpe
Blast to the Past / Deutsch
Boxcar Children / Warner
Geronimo Stilton / Stilton
I Survived / Tarshis
Myth-O-Mania / McMullan

Marble Mazes

I've started a new weekly program at my smaller library for families and elementary-aged kids.  I call it Thursday Things--meaning every Thursday we will have something going on at the library!  However, the "higher ups" made me assign a topic to each week AND they changed the name of it to "Thumbs-Up Thursdays" (which I really don't like!)  The goal is to have programs that will be very simple--meaning low prep and low cost.   Here's the weekly themes:

1st--STEM
2nd--Art
3rd--Legos
4th--Games
and the 5th in March--Building

So we started off with a super fun STEM activity--Marble Mazes.

Supplies
Cardboard (boxes, tubes...)
Craft sticks (regular & Jumbo)
Paper plates
Straws
Colored paper
3 oz Dixie cups
Masking tape
Hot glue
Scissors
And of course, Marbles.

(We could have probably used a box cutter, but the wanted the kids to the as much as possible on their own).

For our purposes I explained that we wanted the marble to get from one spot to another in an fun and interesting way.  I used the pictures of the completed project from these websites to help get them thinking. (FrugalFun4Boys, another one from FrugalFun4Boys, and BuggyAndBuddy).  I did NOT give them any "instructions".

We had five families (14 people) which is a good size for our small library.  The kids were super creative and very engaged.  They came up with some really fun designs.  One dad really get into the process too!

 Three girls played with this marble maze for about an hour--adding to it, decorating it, racing marbles...It was so fun to watch!

I'm so excited our first program in the series went so well!  I'm excited for the other activities we will be doing through April!

Gingerbread Houses

We were so excited to host another school-age program before Christmas...A Gingerbread House Build!  We had 60 people attend!  Kids of all ages (3-adult) had fun creating gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, icing, and goodies (pretzels, mini-marshmallows, gumdrops, Fruit Loops and mini candy canes).  If I were doing the program myself I would have made up cups that were a "variety" because kids would only take two cups.

Check out these awesome creations!