My First Story Time and Stop In Stories

My First Story Time and Stop In Stories are two peas in a pod, two of a kind, a perfect pair. In fact, they are more or less the same exact program with a few small differences:

1. Stop In Stories is a summer-only program. My First Story Time is all year long.

2. Stop In Stories has no registration. My First Story Time does (and is, specifically, for one and two-year-olds).

3. Stop In Stories is at our Main branch. My First Story Time is at our Station branch.

Other than that, the actual flow of these two programs is identical. And I have to say, I've really come to love this simple, no-frills storytime. It's a real "less is more" kind of program, covering lots of early literacy skills without a lot of mess, set-up, or supplies.

Basically each week consists of books (four or five), songs (three or four), at least one prop (scarves, shakers, drums, or the parachute), and a valiant effort to always include at least one puppet.

For a complete list of my favorite books for this age group, view my "Baby Time" list on the Recommended Storytime Books by Topic page. I try to (but don't always) update it every time I use a new book with the 1-2-year-old crowd.

Here's some scarf fun that we had at My First Story Time around May/June:

My top five favorite My First Story Time/Stop In Stories books are:

Cat's Colors by Jane Cabrera

Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell

Freight Train by Donald Crews

Jump! by Scott M. Fischer

Baby Parade by Rebecca O'Connell

Again, for a complete list of my favorite books for this age group, view my "Baby Time" list on the Recommended Storytime Books by Topic page!

My top five favorite My First Story Time/Stop In Stories songs are (red = ipod, blue = sing)*:

The Scarf is on My Head (scarves) **

Popcorn Kernals (scarves) **

Elevator Song by Mary Lee Sunseri (lap song)

I Know a Chicken by Laurie Berkner (shakers + chicken puppet)

Old MacDonald (with 5 or 6 animal puppets)

* This list does not include any parachute songs (despite my love of the parachute)! I have a list of my top five parachute songs at the end of this post!

** The handout for The Scarf is On My Head & Popcorn Kernels can be downloaded here. The Scarf is On My Head goes to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell and is possibly the reigning favorite scarf song. Popcorn Kernels goes to the tune of Frère Jacques and, for this one, we start out by waving our scarves over our heads, then crumpling them into balls in our hands (the pot), then we shake them up in their crumpled balls, and then toss them up in the air for them to "pop." It's fun. I've done a handful of different scarf songs with this age group but these two seem to stand out as the overall favorites.

What works least: I've learned over time that you can't come back from the parachute. It excites the kids so much that if you try to do something like read a book after it, you might as well just sit and silently read to yourself. It doesn't work. It's been a long time since I have even attempted anything post-parachute--I've learned my lesson--but unfortunately, sometimes this problem happens when books follow any song. Or even sometimes when they don't. Yet, you need songs to break up the books and hold the kids attention! It's a catch 22, I guess, but it's to be expected. I try really, really hard to pick easy and/or interactive books to immediately follow songs and that definitely helps ease them back into listening mode.

What works best: The parachute. Like I said, nothing can come back from it because it's really always such a success. In fact, here is a BONUS list of my top five favorite (and most-used) parachute songs, not only from My First Story Time and Stop In Stories, but also from Musical Kids (red = ipod, blue = sing):

Thunder & Lightening *

These Are The Colors Over You **

Slow and Fast by Hap Palmer 

Let's Go Riding in an Elevator ***

Wheels on the Bus ****

* Thunder & Lightening is a short parachute song to the tune of The More We Get Together. We start out by shaking the parachute low and fast for the first verse, then lift up high for the second. It goes like this: 

There's thunder and lightening and wind and rain,

There's thunder and lightening and wind and rain,

Come under my umbrella, umbrella, umbrella,

Come under my umbrella, it's starting to storm.

** These are the Colors Over You, thanks (as usual) to Jbrary, is a nice, calm, song, perfect for the smallest babies. Here's how it goes:

*** This is Let's Go Riding in an Elevator, again, thanks to Jbrary:



I sing this a lot slower for suspense. Then I have the kids go under the parachute as the floors move up higher and it works really, really well. They love it!

**** Wheels on the Bus is an on-top-of-the-'chute song. I have all the kids sit down flat in the middle of the parachute. There are usually 1 or 2 kids who are either afraid of this or who would just prefer to stand outside the parachute with the grown ups, but the majority of the group likes this part the best of all! We do three verses: 

1. The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round

2. The wipers on the bus go swish swish swish

3. The doors on the bus go open and shut

When the kids are all seated in the middle, the grown ups pull up from the parachute's handles and we all walk around in a circle, giving the kids a ride. We do this for the first verse (the wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round). Then, for the second verse, the adults "swish" the parachute around the kids as we sing. For the third verse, we lift the parachute up around the kids like a big barrier and then, on the word "shut" we snap the barrier down, basically creating a little peek-a-boo game. Last, we sing verse #1 again, walking in the opposite direction from the we did the first time. This works well for babies (6 months and older) as well as the 3-5's crowd!

There are a bunch of others that I use frequently (take a look through some of my Musical Kids posts for more ideas!), but these five are, for sure, my favorites!

Happy story time-ing!

An Egg Hunt 'Round the Depatrment

I have been meaning to do this for years and, for some reason, I always seem to forget until, like, the day before Easter. But not this year! I planned an egg hunt around the Youth Services Department, ongoing for the month of March... and people really liked it!

Figuring out the logistics took a bit of time. I didn't want to have to continue to re-hide the eggs every time someone did the egg hunt. So I decided on paper eggs, taped up around the room. I was trying to work out something with hints and clues and then, finally I just thought: No, keep it simple, just go for the old school hunt.

No hints, no clues, just good ol' lookin' around. Here is what our sign looked like:

Making a "Family Egg Hunt" was a little trickier than you might think. Three-year-olds and twelve-year-olds have very different finding-things abilities and I wanted to accommodate all ages, having it be challenging yet doable for everyone. No easy task! I wound up making some eggs easy to find, some eggs hard to find, and hoping for the best.

The 8 Easter eggs + Egg Hunt sheet can be downloaded here!

The day after the egg hunt's debut, the consensus from my coworkers was that it was "too hard." But I disagreed. I was happy with it. In fact, I wanted it to be a challenge, wanted it to take a little while. So I kept it like it was. There were four eggs that were easy-ish to find and four eggs that were trickier. To make the whole thing a little easier (a compromise on my part, but I'm glad I did it), after trying it out a few days, we added bunny hints.*

* The bunny hints are easier-to-find, strategically placed pictures of bunnies that point to harder-to-find eggs. Here's an example:

Not too tricky to find this bunny at the end of the shelf of books.

A bit trickier is the under-shelf egg that the bunny points to.

The bunny hints were used for the 4 trickier-to-find eggs (even though one of them was only moderately tricky) and we didn't outright tell the kids about this unless they asked for a hint. If they got stuck, telling them about the bunnies was often the first clue that we gave. But a good handful of egg hunters figured out the bunny thing all on their own, which was really cool!

Then, if (aka, "when") the kids found all 8 eggs, they got to pick a prize from the prize basket:

We were able to use up an assortment of leftover things here, which is always wonderful. There were dinosaur eggs, wind-up robots, 3D geometric puzzles, owl stampers, pirate bouncy balls, atomic bouncy balls, and globe keychains. A nice selection, I must say!

What worked least: Before the bunny hints, the hunt was a little hard. Once the bunny hints made their appearance, the hunt got a little easier and more appropriate for younger searchers. BUT sometimes the bunnies would fall down. We were pretty good about making sure we always replenished them, but, at times, there would be one down, and this actually made the eggs that the bunnies were supposed to point to, even harder to find because people assumed, no bunny--no egg. As the month went on, we all got a little more neurotic about making sure the bunnies were always properly taped up.

What worked best: I actually feel like the difficultly level made this super fun for everybody! We had a great turn out, approximately 160 hunters, and I feel really proud of how well-taken-advantage-of my simple little egg hunt was! It was such a success that I'll be doing a "sports ball hunt" (to take advantage of this summer's reading club theme) from June through August!

Holiday Craft and Story

This past Saturday night was the big holiday parade in the village of Huntington! In conjunction with this event, my library director was able to set up a sort of parade kick-off program for the kids at the library, and I was lucky enough to be the librarian assigned to do it! I spent a month or so choosing what I hoped to be perfect selection of family holiday stories and the right mix of crafts. It wound up being a fun event for lots and lots of kids!

The program was drop-in style, from 2:00 to 4:00 (but really more like 4:45) and for all ages. I ordered a ton of stuff. I was told to expect crowds and I was told right! We had over 60 people! I decided to have 6 different crafts, each on their own table, and to have the families move around from table-to-table as they wanted (in the same format as the Watercolor Workshop, which really worked well). For me, this format is, for sure, the way to go for an assortment of crafts.

We received many compliments on Saturday's programs so I figured I'd share each craft. They were as follows:

Christmas Tree Ornaments

This was the crowd favorite of all of Saturday's crafts. I purchased these snap-together ornaments from S&S and let the kids just go to town with them. I put out pom-poms, buttons, pipe cleaners, sparkles, feathers, and also paint and paint brushes. It was all super messy and really let the kids be creative. There was one glitch though. The snap-together ornaments each have two different shaped halves that look almost identical--so almost identical that I thought they were all compatible with each other and therefore put them all out in a basket. So kids would pick up two pieces and sometimes they'd snap right together and sometimes we'd twist and push and they'd just never fit together properly. So be warned! Once we were privy to the situation, I put sets together to make it easier going forward and that helped fix the problem. All in all, still the overall favorite.

Paper Snowflakes

This is an easy, classic, and virtually free craft that I was obsessed with as a kid. I tried it a while back in Books n Play for Pre-K but it wasn't a huge hit with that age group. However I found it to be absolutely perfect for the older kids! It seems like they can snip these up for a while before getting bored and some of them were so focused and precise. I think it's the element of mystery--not knowing how your finished product will look until you've unfolded it--that makes snowflake cutting so exciting for the older kids (and the parents too). The only thing to remember with this craft is that the paper must be square! I chose not to pre-cut squares but to instead have the kids trim the paper themselves. No regrets there. It's all part of the experience! I'm glad I included this simple craft in the day's events because it really went over well with many families.

Mitten Hand Print Wall Hanging

This is was an easy kit that I ordered from Oriental Trading that wound up making really cute keepsakes! When I made my sample for this (seen above), I had to borrow kids on the floor because my hand was too big to fit in the mittens. Because of this, I thought it wouldn't be a doable craft for the older children, but it actually worked out totally fine. I guess there's a bigger difference between older kids' hands and adults' hands than I realized. Anyway, everyone loved this! Way more than I had expected! One mom even told me a few days later that she made one with each of her three kids and hung them all next to each other at home. Success!

Penguin Magnet

This was another simple kit from Oriental Trading. I liked this because it was good for all ages, quick, cheap, not paper (I didn't want too many of the crafts to just be paper) and not even remotely Christmassy. Even though this kit was quick to do, the kids really seem to enjoy it--I'm guessing because they made a "thing" (a magnet) and not just a picture. Plus this was great for all ages. I even saw a few moms with teeny babies sitting down to make one of these. Some older kids wound up making a set of them and that was cute too. It was perfect to group with other crafts because it always looks cute and it's hard to mess up. I might not want to use this as a stand alone craft because it doesn't allow for much creativity on its own, but for this situation, it absolutely was perfect. It filled the "thing" component for me.

Chalk Traced Holiday Lights

Thank you, Pinterest. This came from BuggyAndBuddy.com and just looked so pretty and doable. While kind of messy, and kind of less doable than I'd expected (perhaps in part to me using sidewalk chalk instead of something smaller; who knows?), it was pretty and fun for everyone! It turned out that many of the kids didn't want to make a string of lights but really enjoyed just drawing with chalk on black paper. That's cool too! Some people made the string of lights, some made glowing Christmas trees, some made glowing menorahs, and some just made scribbles and happy faces. As the hours went on, some kids even glued my light-shaped, cardstock templates to their projects, using it as an art supply. (I quickly made more.) They were having a good time just doing their own thing and that's all that matters! Sometimes you never know, right?

Color a Snowman

The day before the program, I decided to throw in one more last-minute activity and it was this--a coloring sheet, nothing fancy about it. Yet sometimes I am amazed and how the simplest craft is the most fun. And this was super simple. I had already formatted the "blank snowman" template a while back for Books n Play for Pre-K so it was easy for me to run a few copies off again. While this craft was a bit of an afterthought, the table was never empty! I think the appeal of this is that it works for almost all ages, it's virtually mess-free, and it allows for as much or as little creativity as the colorer sees fit. Everyone likes coloring! Even our pages got in on the action. I'm glad I threw this one in; it worked.

I'd also selected three books for the storytime part of this program: Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner, Bear Stays Up for Christmas by Karma Wilson, and Have You Been Naughty or Nice by Ethan Long. Picking Christmas books felt wrong but the town's parade ended in a Christmas tree lighting with Santa, so avoiding Christmas books also felt wrong. I tried by best to compile a collection that was "light Christmas" and I think I did an ok job with these three. Snowmen and Night is always safe and, while Santa Claus makes a brief appearance in the other two books, they avoid religion completely.

My director and I had discussed how we would go about incorporating the stories in with the drop-in craft, since families would come and go. In the end, it was decided that we'd sort of wing it based on when there were crowds and if the kids came in waves. We wound up holding two little storytimes during the craft, one about 20-minutes into the program and one a little over and hour into it. My director did the reading and she chose to read both Snowmen and Night and Bear Stays Up for Christmas. She read as the kids continued to craft. When she did, some kids gathered around her and some continued to craft, which is about what we'd expected. It really seemed like everyone who did move from the craft to the story though, really liked these books. Something for everyone, I guess. Nobody was bothered by the appearance of Santa Claus or the mention of Christmas. Phew.

What worked least: Although the kids really liked them, the snap-together ornaments from S&S were just junky. I wish I'd paid enough attention when I'd opened the packages to realize that there were two different corresponding halves instead of just tossing them all in a basket and having them not match up right. But once I figured out what happened, and pre-matched the pieces up, it really was a fun and successful craft. And funnily enough, the favorite craft of the afternoon!

What worked best: The overall format of the program was probably its biggest success. I think that having the kids choose what crafts they did and when the did them, sort of gave them a little sense of  independence and made them feel like they were in charge. Plus, they all left smiling and with armfuls of handmade goodies.

This kicked off the holiday season here! December is going to be a fun month for library programs!

Hugs for Grandparents - Drop-in Craft

Today I had a drop-in craft called "Hugs for Grandparents." Originally, I wanted to do a big Grandparents Day celebration with tea and snacks, a craft and games, but when I learned that the program would wind up falling before our September registration, I almost didn't have one at all.

I hated the idea of leaving Grandparents Day unobserved so I compromised with a toned-down, drop in craft and, actually, it was really fun!

I got the idea from Pinterest, which lead me to Last Minute DIY Valentines Day Ideas from a website called Built by Kids. I figured a life-sized hug would be easy, cheap, and fun for the kids. Plus, it wasn't too much to buy or prepare in case we didn't get much of a turn out--you never know with drop-ins. And we'd get to use up a bunch of old stuff!

I wound up having about 12 people show up and, to start, I had each kid (and one adult) lie with their top half across a sheet of white butcher paper. Then either their parents, grandparents, or I traced around their torso (I warned them before I got near their arm pits) to create their life-sized hug outline. Then they were set to start decorating!

I put out colored paper, scissors, crazy scissors, do-a-dot markers, regular markers, thick crayons, skinny crayons, scraps of fabric, feathers, glue, glue sticks, buttons and gems, heart doilies, and other pre-cut paper hearts we had leftover from Valentine's Day. (I couldn't find the pom-poms!)

The kids had a hard time lying down on the paper just right, but once we figured out the tracing kinks, they absolutely loved decorating themselves. I think this program had the perfect mix of structure and openness. And every single kid told me it was their first time getting traced. So this made it really fun and exciting!

Here are some kids and their grandparents hard at work:

And here are some of the finished projects:

This was super easy and fun. I was worried it would be too simple but even the adults enjoyed themselves!

What worked least: The kids had a hard time figuring out the right way to lie on the paper. I had to tell them to shift right and then shift down and then straighten out a whole bunch of times, but once they were situated, they were amazingly patient as we traced around them.

What worked best: They loved all the random stuff! Like shopping in a bargain bin is to adults, digging through the buttons and the fabrics for just the right things seemed thrilling to the kids. This was a total hit!

Sidenote: I am switching "what worked best" and "what worked least" so I can now end my posts on a positive note!

Happy Grandparents Day, everyone!