3, 2, 1... Blast Off!

Librarian friends, I am tired. I wasn't going to blog about "3, 2, 1... Blastoff!" because, honestly, my coworker, Jen (of National Oreo Cookie Day Taste Test, and of two Elephant and Piggie Parties), did the brunt of the prep work for it. But it was cute and fun and successful so, other than me being tired and the program being a whole month ago, why not give it a quick post? Summer is over now; things have quieted down; and I'm ready to discuss it. So, here goes.

This program, for kids entering grades K-2, began with two stories, chosen and read by me. First was How To Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers and next was Bitty Bot by Tim McCanna. I just think How To Catch a Star is SO SO sweet. It's about a boy who wants to catch a star to keep in a jar. It's so innocent and touching, with those gorgeous and full-of-wonder illustrations that Oliver Jeffers does so well. The kids really enjoyed this! So much so that I was almost afraid to ruin a perfectly good storytime by reading another book, but I went for it anyway. I chose Bitty Bot, which is told in rhyme (or, as I called it, "a giant poem") and about a robot who builds himself a rocket and heads to the moon for an overnight adventure. The kids liked this one too! 

I think I have said this here before, but I am always kind of surprised when the kids are super-engaged through the storytime portion of my programs. Maybe I shouldn't be, since I expend a lot of effort choosing engaging books and reading them in a way that I hope is interesting to the kids, but yet, I am. I always am.

After the stories (against my will, but with lots of convincing from Jen) I did a full out, Musical Kids style, Rocketship Run with the kids. This was my first time ever doing a song with school age kids and I was nervous! I thought they'd think it was too babyish! I tried to make it fun and silly, sort of like, "Come on! Let's do this silly, babyish thing together!" I seriously LAID ON the enthusiasm, probably as sort of a defense mechanism...

Guess what? IT TOTALLY WORKED. It was seriously so much fun. Like, I couldn't believe the great time that we were all having playing with cardboard rocketships on sticks and dancing around to a Laurie Berkner song. Big kids! Doing Rocketship Run! So awesome!

I have written about this song time and time again, but this is my Rocketship Run "kit:"

In Musical Kids, when I hold up one of these signs, the kiddos all run up and touch their rockets to it, like they're really "going" to the sun/moon/etc. I'VE NEVER TOLD THEM TO DO THIS, and yet every week, it happens. It's so funny! They totally invented it and it's continued on from week-to-week and from class-to-class. For years! Because a handful of the school-age kids in this program were "Musical Kids graduates," they immediately did this! In fact, they were super into it. Seriously ya'll, this was awesome! I am SO glad I reluctantly agreed it it!

Then we moved on to the crafting, which, again, I can take absolutely ZERO credit for, other than, I guess, agreeing to it. This craft was Jen's baby. It was astronauts with photos of the kids faces (which she took of them as they arrived and had our clerk, Mary, print out while I did the storytime) glued on black paper that she spritzed with watered down white paint to make a cool, starry effect. I feel unqualified to discuss the prepping of this in detail but it looks like kind of a lot of work, honestly. Lots of cutting and spritzing. 

Here are the kids decorating their astronaut selves:

 

As the crafting wrapped up (when there was about 5-minutes left in the program), Jen ushered the kids over to the astronaut snack tasting table, where I was waiting with samples of different astronaut fruits for them to try. Fun fact: We meant to order ice cream! Either I messed up or Amazon messed up, but either way, we got fruit instead! Luckily, it worked out and was, possibly, even more fun since we got FIVE different types of fruit instead of ONE type of ice cream. We sampled cinnamon apples, peaches, bananas, grapes, and strawberries.

The consensus: The bananas and peaches were the stand-out faves; nobody liked the grapes except for me; the strawberries were decent but you can get the same thing in cereal; and the apples were "fine." 

Now, here are some of the finished crafts:

What worked least: I think the timing got a little rushed at the end but it wound up not being a big deal. Ideally, I think we would have wanted the tasting to go on a little longer, but in reality, 5-minutes was actually plenty of time for them to take a bite of each thing and discuss it a bit. Probably, 10 minutes would have actually been too long anyway.

What worked best: Rocketship Run! SO MUCH FUN.