Sadie's Top 5, Ages 6-9 months

The big theme of Sadie's 6-9 month book selection is GIGGLES. All the books on this list are books that lend themselves to using funny voices, elaborate kisses, lap bounces, and tickles! My Sadie loves to giggle! As usual, I couldn't totally decide this month and wound up changing her picks up until my self-imposed deadline (today!) but here we go...

1. Hello Bugs! by Smriti Prasada is full of fun sounds and tickles. Each high-contrast page presents a shiny bug and simple text--"Hello, Bee! (buzz, buzz)," "Hello, Snail! (slide, glide)" or "Hello, Beelte (scuttle, scuttle)"--until the last page, which says, "Bye bye, Butterfly! (flutter, flutter)" This book has it ALL. Not only does it mean mom makes silly bug noises (Sadie's favorite is "zuzz zuzz" for "Hello, Dragonfly!" which comes with a lot of bonus belly tickles), but the bugs are SHINY. And the pages are otherwise black-and-white. Doesn't get better than that! Ace in the hole, my friends, ace in the hole! (Sidenote: There is another very similar book called Hello Animals! by Smriti Prasada and Sadie likes that one a lot too!)

2. Tap Tap Bang Bang by Emma Garcia is, like Hello Bugs!, full of fun sounds and tickles. Plus, in Tap Tap Bang Bang, we get to slap the pages of the book a bunch of times too. Each page features a different tool and what the tool "says." For example: "We can cree craw, cree craw, cut with the saw and chippety chip with the chisel," "We can zzz zzz make a hole with the drill and twizzle and twist with the screwdriver." Then at the end, we find out that, all this time, we've been making a go-cart! I don't know if it's the tools themselves Sadie likes or if it's just the silly noises and things I do with her while we read that make her giggle (although it's probably the latter). Her favorites are "zzz zzz" with the drill (which amounts to me tickling her belly and saying "zzzzz"), "grabbety grab" with the pliers (which means that I grab her) and "lift lift" with the jack (which means that I lift her up as high as I can). She also seems to enjoy when we "slap and slosh" with the paint brush (which means that we slap the page of the book). Emma Garcia's books really appeal to Sadie, as this is the second one that's appeared on one of her lists!

3. Baby Cakes by Karma Wilson resonates with Sadie because, like most of the other books in this post, it involves singing, bouncing, kisses and tickles. But it's not only that, she's drawn to these pictures too! This whole book is basically chant that, to me, seems to pretty clearly to follow the beat of Pat-a-Cake. It starts with, "Baby cakes, baby cakes, I love you. Baby cake, baby cakes, yes I do!" Along the way we get to "Kiss my little Baby Cakes on the nose/Smooch my little Baby Cakes on the toes," "Nibble little Baby Bakes on the feet/Oh my little Baby Cakes taste so sweet," and "Laugh with little Baby Cakes, Ha, Ha, Ha/Sing to little Baby Cakes, La La La." Of course, like most books for kids this age, it ends with Baby Cakes going night night. This book always draws Sadie in, while a lot of other books I try to read her, really don't. Even when she's super tired and cranky, this book can pull her in for one last hurrah before bed. I also have a feeling that, as Sadie gets older, she's going to continue to like this book and the chanting and tickles that come with it.

4. Baby Parade by Rebecca O'Connell is a book that I've used in baby storytimes many times. It works great for groups, but it also, apparently, works well well one-on-one! The majority of the book's pages say things like, "Wave to the baby in the big, red wagon!" and "Wave to the baby in the bright orange backpack," which is great because Sadie likes my extremely cheery "hello voice" as well as watching my hand while I wave (though she is still a novice waver herself). Of course, we wave and say hi to all the babies as they go by in the parade, which is fun and keeps Sadie's attention completely. But the very best part of this book is the first page! It says, "Here come the babies! It's a baby parade!" and I read it to Sadie in my very silliest announcer voice. She loves it! Sometimes even when we're not reading the book and I'm just trying to make her giggle, I'll say, "It's a baby parade!" and it does the trick!

5. A Kiss Like This by Mary Murphy is full of kisses! But not just regular kisses, silly kisses! One of Sadie's most favorite things is when I sort of "come at her" from a few inches away while making a funny noise and then kiss or tickle her. This book is ALL about that. Each page has a different type of animal kiss: "A giraffe kiss is gentle and tall. Like this! *kiss*," "A mouse kiss is quick and small. Like this! *kiss*," or "A bee kiss is fuzzy and buzzy. Like this! *kiss*" So many different silly ways for me to kiss Sadie! PLUS the last page has a big super-shiny heart that is basically a baby magnet. This book is awesome!

My next installment of Sadie's Top 5 will come when she is ONE YEAR OLD. That is wild. I can't even believe it.

Campfire Stories for the Fourth

Last July, I did a program called Campfire Stories, where we read stories around the "campfire," did a fire-themed craft, and made s'mores. It was mostly a success (aside from me not being wild about my story choices or really loving my craft).

So this year, I brought out the campfire again, but to alleviate my issues with last year's version of the program, I made the program less "campfire-themed" and more about July 4th.

When the kids came in the room, I had the lights out, the campfire set up on the floor with logs around it (care of my husband's wood burning stove stash), books set up, and pieces of foam mats (borrowed from my Share & Play Babies program) as spots to sit on (because I will forever associate campfires with Girl Scout camping, where we had to tote homemade situpons through the woods so we'd have a cleared-off spot to plant our butts).

Here's how it looked:

I had each kid plop on a mat (with the flashlights they'd brought with them) and I began to read. Before the program I'd pulled five books out and decided that I'd choose my stories based on the group. I wound up reading Red, White, and Boom! by Lee Wardlaw and Should I Share My Ice Cream?: An Elephant & Piggie Book by Mo Willems.

Red, White, and Boom! was only okay. I kind of felt like I had to read a Fourth of July book since this was a Fourth of July program, but when I looked through a bunch of them, I didn't find one that I absolutely loved. I picked this one because it was easy, the illustrations were nice, and it rhymed. But I didn't love it. And from the looks of the kids, I don't think they did either. Maybe if I start looking now I'll find a better book for next year.

Anyway, it's good that I read this book first because the kids had a pretty good attention span at the start of the program and, once I announced that  I'd be reading Elephant and Piggie next, all was right again with the world.

I may have bragged about this before but I have to say, I do a mean Should I Share My Ice Cream? monologue.

I considered reading a third book but decided to skip it since there was so much else to get to. Still lined up I had two crafts, a photo backdrop, and s'mores!

The first craft was fireworks painting, stolen from CraftyMorning.com.

It's so easy! It's just toilet paper rolls with slits cut vertically along the bottom so you can fan them out to make burst-shapes. I did change my version of this craft a tiny bit from CraftyMorning. I swapped out the white paper for black (way cooler!) and traded the red, white, and blue paint for the similar-but-prettier magenta, white, and teal. I also put out white crayons so the kids could add details if they wanted to and, at the end, I offered red or green glitter (which was only to be applied by adults) to top off their fireworks!

It didn't occur to me that I had already put out the 4th of July Self-Adhesive Shapes (these from Oriental Trading) in preparation of our second craft, so many of the kids wound up sticking these on their fireworks scenes as well. Luckily we had plenty (500 to be exact), so this was no big deal.

Here are a few of the beautiful fireworks scenes. They came out really nice!

  

Next it was time for craft number two! Picture frames! I used these frames from Oriental Trading, these Fourth of July stickers from Oriental Trading, and this fireworks backdrop from Oriental Trading. Here are two of the results:

This was fun and cute, but not without a hitch. The plan was: The kids were supposed to come up to the backdrop one-by-one as they were working on their crafts, get their photo taken, and then I was supposed to email the pictures really quickly to our clerk, Mary, who would hop into her office, print them out and then come back and deliver them to the children before the end of the program.

"I don't think so!" said the library's wifi!

The kids were happy to make their various crafts, then sit around the fire with s'mores, but unfortunately, everyone had to wait for their pictures until I could make my phone and the wifi play nicely with each other.

S'mores around the fire was the last thing I had lined up the night. Like last year's program, I used marshmallow fluff, chocolate bars, and graham crackers. No, the chocolate bar doesn't melt next to fluff the way it does next to a roasted marshmallow, but my options were limited here without access to anything hot! And I wasn't about to have a line of kids at the microwave.

Anyway, does this look like it didn't work to you?

Nope. It worked perfectly! And do these kids look like they're upset by their non-melted chocolate?

Nope. They were enjoying themselves completely!

As the program came to a close, Mary started to appear with some of the printed photos. The wifi finally cooperated! The parents and kids were actually totally content to wait a couple of minutes extra so they could take home their pictures. What a great community I work in!

Here are few of the cuties against the backdrop:

What worked least: The pictures! What a mess that whole thing became. While it all worked out fine in the end, it certainly wasn't ideal for me to have to send the photos to Mary three times or for the families to have to wait around an extra 10 minutes after the program for the pictures they were promised. This needs to be ironed out if I decide to repeat the program next year!

What worked best: The obvious answer here is the s'mores, because the snack is pretty much always what works best in these types of programs. The insightful answer here is the fireworks painting paired with the foam stickers, because it was the perfect mix of process and product, it was mixed media, and it included the use of recycled materials (and then, of course, countered that with foam stickers. Oh well.)

Such a fun program! Hope everyone had a great Fourth of July!