Friday, September 29, 2017

School-Age: Fairytales

I feel like it is a safe assumption that most librarians enjoy, or at least see the value of, fairytales. Most of our first stories we heard as children were fairytales and many of them have been retold in many languages and cultures. 

1. Reading
We read "Prince of a Frog" by Jackie Urbanovic. It's funny and is a wonderful read-aloud, as well as a perfect book to introduce the story of "The Frog Prince".



2. Discussion + Booktalk
We talked about what a fairytale was. Most of them had heard of "Cinderella" or "The Three Little Pigs", but they did not know that they were called 'fairytales'.

I also introduced the term 'fractured fairytales' into the discussion. We talked about what the word 'fracture' means. I asked if they knew anyone who had broken a bone and, if so, had they heard it also called a 'fracture'. Then, I related it back to fairytales, saying a fractured fairytale is when you break down a fairytale and reorganize it or rewrite it so that it is a little bit different.

Some examples:
1. "The Boy Who Cried Bigfoot!" by Scott Magoon = "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"
2. "Little Red and the Very Hungry Lion" by Alex T. Smith = "Little Red Riding Hood"
3. "The Three Ninja Pigs" by Corey Rosen Schwartz = "The Three Little Pigs"

3. Activity
We played a game of fairytale trivia. I made trivia cards that had four clues on each card. Each card was about a fairytale and the four clues started vague and became more detailed. The kids had to guess what fairytale I was giving them clues for.

Examples:
3a. Clues:
1. The character steals gold from giants.
2. A character spends all his mom's money at the marketplace.
3. He buys some beans.
4. The beans are magic and grow into a gigantic beanstalk.
Fairytale: Jack and the Beanstalk

3b. Clues:
1. This princess has trouble sleeping at night.
2. She is a guest at a castle.
3. The queen of the castle does not believe she is a princess.
4. They place a pea under her mattress.
Fairytale: The Princess and the Pea

3c. Clues:
1. There are three goats in this story.
2. The goats are looking for food.
3. They try to cross a bridge.
4. There is a troll that lives under the bridge that threatens to "Gobble them up!"
Fairytale: Three Billy Goats Gruff

We had 12 different fairytale trivia cards that we had for the activity. I loved stumping them with some that were a little harder (like "Three Billy Goats Gruff" or "The Little Red Hen"). We had some harder (less known) fairytales/folktales mixed in with some very familiar ones like "Cinderella" or "Rapunzel".

4. Craft
We made our very own frog princes. I found a craft from Red Ted Art of frog princes made from paper plates. I painted paper plates green before the program and folded them in half. Then, I found frog parts from Kids Love Craft. I printed off the frog parts on green paper and we cut out the pieces before the program. We gave the kids glue dots and let them attach their frog parts to make their very own frog prince!



Notes: I enjoyed hearing about all the fairytales the kids remembered. Kids versions of fairytales are fabulous. As for the trivia and the craft? The kids LOVED guessing the fairytales. Some of them were amazing at it and clearly knew their fairytales. I'll have to work to make the clues harder next time. They also loved the craft and many of them were using it like a puppet when the program ended.

Friday, September 22, 2017

School-Age: The Five Senses

I have done storytimes about the five senses, but I was interested in doing an exploratory lab-type program for school-ager's on the topic. We explored each of the five senses this week individually with different hands-on activities.

1. Reading
We read "Seven Blind Mice" by Ed Young. It is a folktale about seven blind mice that each set out to explore the "Something" that has arrived near their home. Each brings back their own view of what they find. 



One mouse feels a pillar, another feels a fan, and another a great cliff. The last mouse 'looks' at the whole picture with the moral that we have to look at every detail to see what the "Something" actually is - an Elephant!

2. Discussion
We had a brief discussion, defining what the five senses are - touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. I also asked which of the five senses the mice used in the book. As they were blind, they had to 'see' by touching the "Something" to discover it was an elephant.

3. Activity
I broke the five senses down into separate interactive elements. 

Note: The only sense we did NOT do was taste. We do not typically have food at our programs and, with potential food allergies, I decided to forgo having that sense explored at the program. I did have a side-note to parents that they could carry on the interactive activities at home to explore taste.

A. Sight
We did some perception puzzles where one image could have two or more different pictures in it. For example, the duck/rabbit or the illusion puzzles at Scientific Psychic. I showed the pictures and asked the kids to tell me what they saw.

B. Hearing
I used five different plastic jars and put a variety of objects in the jars. Then, I covered them with paper so they could not see into the jar. I passed them around so the kids could shake them and take turns guessing what was in the jars.



I used items we already had in our craft supplies: beans, rocks, Q-tips, beads, and jingle bells.

C. Touch
I filled balloons with a variety of objects and tied them closed. I passed the balloons around to have the kids feel what was inside of them and guess what it is. 



Inside the balloons were: cotton balls, beans, beads, bird seed, and small stones.

The covered jars and numbered balloons together:

Note: I did ask before I passed the balloons around to make sure there were no allergies to the latex in the balloons. 

D. Smell
The last sense that we explore was smell. I used a small Dixie cup to put the items we smelled. Then, I covered the top of the cups with wax paper and taped it to the cup. Using a tooth pick, I punched a couple holes in the top of the wax paper to allow the smells to come through. 



The smells we used were: cinnamon, coffee grounds, and cloves.

4. Craft
To tie it all together to the book, we made paper plate elephants. I had seen a similar craft at Crafty Morning. I found some clipart eyeballs to print out prior to the program. The only other prep we did for the craft was the cut out the edge of the paper plates for the ears and elephant trunk.

Here are some examples my teens made:

Notes:
This was a super fun week and I had really been looking forward to all of the five senses activities to share with the kids! We had big crowds this week so it was a huge success.

Friday, September 15, 2017

School-Age: Printing Press

Our topic this week was the printing press (and the history of the written word)!

1. Reading
The book we read was "I Am a Story" by Dan Yaccarino. Judy Freeman shared the book at her workshop this Spring and I LOVED it. I didn't get into costume like she did while reading it but, even so, the book packs a powerful punch. 


There is only a sentence or two per page but, combined with the images, it is a perfect book to use to discuss the origins of the written word. 

2. Discussion
I created a simplified timeline of the printing press. I defined the printing press as the transfer of an image via ink using pressure. I went through a history of different forms of print, relating it to images we had seen in "I Am a Story". 

We talked about cuneiform, hieroglyphics, wood-block printing and movable type, Gutenberg's printing press, etching, wood engravings, lithography, and Braille. Then we talked about printing and computers in the modern age, such as inkjet printing and having personal computers at home and even in our pockets. 

I made the discussion go full circle when I made the connection that cuneiform was on clay tablets and NOW we have tablets we read from!

3. Craft
We made our own wood block stamps to model after the movable type. We purchased 1 inch wooden blocks from Amazon. They come in bags of 100 blocks so we had plenty for the kids to make several each.

We had foam with the peel-off sticky backs in our craft supplies that we pulled out to use at the program.

These are some we, and our teen helpers, made:

4. Activity
After they finished adding pieces of foam to their blocks, we put out stamp pads and let the kids practice using their wood blocks to stamp card stock.




Notes:
I was very excited about the wood-block stamp craft and it went really well. The only downside is that the ink gets all over the kids hands after a couple stamps. Because of this, we had sani-hands to hand out to them after they were done with the program.

Friday, September 8, 2017

School-Age: Fractals

It's the first week back to doing library programs and we're starting with fractals!

1. Reading
We started the topic of fractals discussing shapes in general. We read the book "Shapes, Reshape" by Silvia Borando. I let the kids guess what they thought each pile of different rectangles and squares would turn into. 




2. Discussion
We defined fractals and I shared the book "Mysterious Patterns: Finding Fractals in Nature" by Sarah and Richard Campbell. It tied in perfectly with "Shapes, Reshape" because we made sense of different shapes in the picture book by having them turn into animals. And then, in Mysterious Patterns, we actually began pointing out shapes we see around us in nature. 



I shared a few pictures I had printed off as well as the pictures in the books to show shapes that they already know in nature -- circles, triangles, cones, cylinders, etc.

Then I shared pictures of fractals and talked more about what they are. The book has an excellent illustration of a tree branching out into smaller and smaller branches demonstrating that each part is a replica of the whole. The same was shown in an image of the individual pieces of a broccoli.

3. Craft
Bringing our shapes discussion full-circle, we made a craft out of shapes that was an exact replica of one of the animals in the book. I chose the hedgehog because I like hedgehogs. It was also easy for me to make the rectangles and squares in Microsoft Publisher. After I made a template, I printed them off on blue paper. We cut them out prior to the programs and put each hedgehog in its own plastic bag to hand out to the kids at the program.

Here's an example I made of the craft:

And some examples my teens made:



Notes:
This was a great week back to programming. Everything went smoothly and we had a good turn-out. Hopefully all the participation we had for Summer Reading Program bodes well for our Fall program attendance (fingers crossed)!