Throwback Post: Elephant and Piggie Party (Plus a Subtle, Yet Important Announcement)

Time for a (kind of) throwback to Tuesday, May 3rd. Sorry for the post delay. I have many excuses (none of which I need to delve into, but really, there are many)! Anyway, on Tuesday, May 3, to mark the official release of Mo Willems' final book in the Elephant and Piggie series (The Thank You Book), my super-creative colleague, Jen, suggested an Elephant and Piggie Party, and naturally, I immediately wanted to be part of it. Also (and, perhaps, selfishly), I shot dibs on being Elephant because (a) I'm always Elephant--so, why stop now? and (b) I would really prefer to wear a suit of all grey than a suit of all pink. And now that I have the visible baby bump seen above (Yay! I'm 4.5 months pregnant!), I had the perfect excuse to greedily claim the role I'd prefer-- a limited wardrobe!

Before the kids even entered the program room, Jen and I started the event off by having them pick who they wanted to be. Elephant? Or Piggie? We each campaigned for ourselves and I don't know what came over me, but I actually felt like it got kind of competitive. ELEPHANT, ELEPHANT, ELEPHANT!

Once each kid chose their favorite librarian book character, we handed them the appropriate disguise. The elephant masks were leftover from a Color Your Own Zoo Animal Masks set from Oriental Trading and the idea for the pig noses came from the blog, Fun in Pre-K & Kinder. We pre-made all the "disguises" ahead of time so they were basically give-aways that could be handed out smoothly at the start of the program. I think they did a good job setting the tone for the evening right away.

 VS

 

Then, we officially opened with a dramatic reading of We Are In a Book, followed by the newly released, The Thank You Book. Obviously it was the first time either of us had read The Thank You Book to a group, as well as the kids' first time hearing it, which felt kind of special! In my head I'd imagined an intro like this, but maybe a little more up-to-date just as we were about to start the book. As usual with Elephant and Piggie books, the kids really liked the story. There's really no surprise there. We all love Mo!

After the two books, we introduced our games: Pin the Nose on Piggie/Pin the Eye on Pigeon and Elephant Trunk Ring Toss.

To prepare for our first game (Pin the Nose on Piggie/Pin the Eye on Pigeon), (1) Jen meticulously made a pile of pig noses and pigeon eyes, (2) We purchased a bunch of prizes (these Pig Erasers from Oriental Trading, these Elephant Whistles from Oriental Trading, and these Owl Squirts from Oriental Trading [because for some crazy reason they don't make pigeon novelties! Go figure!]), and then (3) We hung up our pinning poster.

BUT! Somewhere along the way, we forgot to bring a blindfold into the program! I'm not sure if you, blog reader, have ever done a version of Pin the Tale on the Donkey in a program before, but one thing that holds true for me time and time again, is that kids really like to peek. So when you ask the kids to just close their eyes on the honor system and you don't even present them with a blindfold, it shouldn't really be a huge surprise that almost every pig nose and pigeon eye winds up right where it belongs:

After they pinned (taped) a nose and an eye to the poster, the kids migrated over to Elephant Trunk Ring Toss aka One of My Proudest Program Props To Date.

I hate that I forgot to take a close up picture of this, but I am seriously sooo proud of how it came out. Elephant's face (minus the trunk) is made of grey card stock (about 6 sheets) and black and white paint for the details. Elephant's trunk is made from a cheap, stand-up paper towel holder (this one from Amazon) with half of a pool noodle shoved onto it, then both painted grey to match. Then I taped the base of the paper towel holder to Elephant's face, completely covering it with book tape to keep it from toppling over when the rings were tossed at it and viola! The rings we used were leftovers from Dolphin Ring Toss, which we played at last summer's Library Luau.

Here are two very similar pictures because, like I said, I'm really proud of how this came out:

We had a third game ready to go (The Bird on Your Head Walk, in which the kids were to walk between two pieces of masking tape on the floor with this bluebird finger puppet from Folkmanis balanced on their heads), but everything started getting kind of hectic around this point, so we just had the kids move over to the craft tables instead.

We had a bunch of simple crafts and activity sheets out, but the main craft was another one of Jen's wonderful prep-work babies. She really did do a ton of preparation for this program. I present you... these:

Paper bag puppets! Jen found the templates for these on the blog, Three Little Birds, and had a page pre-cut all the pieces so the kids could easily glue the parts onto the bags. Quick and easy! Interestingly, while there was plenty of stuff for everyone to make both puppets, all the kids loyally stuck with their original character-of-choice, which was pretty cute.

Our other activities included Elephant and Piggie MadLibs (which you can download here), a Pig Day Scrambler (which you can download here), and a Pig Maze (which you can download here). The MadLib was a Pinterest find, while the Pig Day Scrambler and Pig Maze were both from The Happy Pig Day Kit, available through PigeonPresents.com (under "Grown-Up Stuff").

When we had about 15-minutes left in the program, we served our snack: animal crackers and water bottles on either a grey or pink plate. Again the kids stuck with their original corresponding character color. Simple, simple, simple!

What worked least: The games got a little nutzo a little quickly. They were definitely fun, but just chaotic. Plus, we forgot the blindfold! Way to encourage peeking on our part!

What worked best: I think our dramatic reading really took the cake here. We were told by a very sweet grandma that we were good enough to take our act on the road. Maybe one day!

BONUS: Here's an Elephant and Piggie genuine laughter selfie:

Popsicle Stick Art

As librarians, we all have some programs that we're really excited about and some programs that seem fun when we first plan them, but then kind of mediocre when the time really comes to do them. Unfortunately this was one of the latter. But, luckily, it wound up being pretty successful anyway!

It was inspired by this link from CraftWhack. When I first stumbled upon it on Pinterest (where else!?), I was really excited to try it out, but when I started to make my own sample (see below), I realized that this was a craft that took patience, concentration, and a relatively steady hand--qualities that kids don't typically develop until a bit later in life.

As soon as I started working on the sample, I immediately felt less excited about the program and less confident that it would be fun for all ages. Therefore, I need a second craft. Craft #2 was simple--just building a scene with skinny popsicle sticks and other collage items (jewels, buttons, and googly eyes). My sample is below--a dragon fly, a flower, and a fence* colored and glued to a piece of paper:

* The fence was a last minute addition (and a hit with the kids!), thanks to my husband. When I left for work on the morning of this program, I told him about what I had planned for the craft and he said, "When I was a kid, I always liked to make a fence with popsicle sticks." So before the program, I threw a fence into the scene and voila! And what do you know, almost every kid wound up making a fence themselves!

The program worked out well. While many kids dabbled at both stations (the tracing craft from Pinterest table and the simple collage table), it worked out that the slightly younger crew mostly did the collage and the school-age kids spent more time with the tracing. And everyone got really creative!

Here are a few fun, finished products of both types:

I was so worried that these crafts were going to be lame, that I was actually overjoyed at how much everyone liked them! Sometimes it doesn't take tons of bells and whistles for success!

What worked least and best: Everything. Another boring answer here. But, other than my own hangups about this being too simple, it certainly seemed like everything about this program worked!

Tape Resist Paintings

Back in October, I did a program called Watercolor Workshop for ages 3-5, where we explored a few different techniques for making watercolor painting a little more interesting. The overall favorite technique (and also the one with the coolest finished product) was the masking tape resist. When I was setting up for the masking tape resist--pulling a bunch of rolls of masking tape out of a bin--I accidentally pulled out one roll of painters tape instead. Well surprise, surprise, this worked a lot better! In the past, tape resist paintings had always been more of a challenge than they should have been because ripping masking tape off was just plain annoying (and usually tore even high quality paper). BUT thanks to my happy accident, tape resist projects got a whole lot easier!

Fast forward six months... yesterday I did Tape Resist Paintings with tempera paint, painters tape, and actual canvases (these from Oriental Trading, which were actual decent quality!) for kids in grades K-3. It was great!

First, I had the kids cover their canvases in painters tape. A lot (if not, all) of them needed help with ripping it off the roll, which I hadn't considered at all! Luckily my group was on the small side (plus I had two moms sit in), so I was able to bounce around and help everyone with all of their necessary tape ripping. And it was even kind of funny when, after I ripped the tape, the kids then had to pull it off my fingers. We got a little giggle out of it.

As the kids finished their taping, I had them each move on to paint. I tried to encourage them to be as creative as possible: to mix colors, make patterns, etc. Some kids finished quickly; others were so excited by the prospect of color-mixing that they got distracted and it took them longer. One girl made the most beautiful colors (coral, ocean blue, army green, etc.) and one girl added a few drops of muddy water to each of her paints and got a cool, swirly look over everything. One girl made polka dots and one boy did splatter paint (although possibly by accident). I was really impressed by everyone's creativity! 

A good amount of the paintings were too wet to take home right away so I set up a little drying corner on the floor.

I told most of the kids to peel the tape off after the paint dried so the lines would be a little straighter. Unfortunately, because some of the paintings were so wet, this meant peeling the tape off at home--which meant that I didn't get to actually see a lot of the finished projects!

BUT! I did get to see a few and they came out awesome! Here are two of them (and their two silly-faced, goofball creators):

What worked least: I haven't quite figured out how to make the tape lines really perfect. I advised the kids to (a) press the tape down firmly and (b) paint away from the tape instead of into the tape, but even still, a lot of the edges still got smeary. Even my sample had slightly smeared edges. Most of the kids didn't care (and probably didn't even notice), but one girl was a little upset that the lines looked messy and I don't know how I could have even changed that!

What worked best: I think this craft, done on canvas, was the absolutely perfect mix of process and product. The kids got to be really messy and creative, but still walked out with something cool. An older sibling even suggested I do this craft with tweens and I think I may just take her up on that in the fall!

Spring Blossom Tree Painting

It finally feels like spring has sprung in New York! It's absolutely gorgeous outside and I'm almost considering hanging my winter coat up for the season. Anyway, the perfect weather came just in time for my Spring Blossom Tree Painting program at our branch library.

This program, which was this past Wednesday, was for ages 3-5. I had a nice size group and started it off with a short storytime. First I read Wake Up, It's Spring! by Lisa Campbell Ernst; next we all sang 5 Little Ducks with the monkey mitt; and last, I ended with Spring is Here by Will Hillenbrand. Both books were new to me and I think they went over really well. They're both super cute and easy pre-school-age-appropriate books about the start of spring. Like I said, perfect timing with the weather!

Then it was crafting time-- and a messy one at that! Good thing I remembered the baby wipes!

I had two different crafts out, one at each half of the table, however they very quickly got mixed up and became one in the same. Here are the the two springy flower paintings that I intended for the kid to make:

Spring Blossom Trees

For this painting, I used brown paint (with regular paint brushes) for the branches of the trees, then made the blossoms by stamping pink paint with the flat side of a piece of cut up okra. Here's a picture of the okra stamping supplies:

Pro tip: Advise the kids to "stamp out" the okra a few times on an empty plate or paper towel so there is only a light coat of paint covering the flat stamping side. This way you see the details of the "flower" better when it's stamped onto the tree.

Finger Paint Flowers

I used pre-cut stems (see below), glue sticks, and finger paint for the craft above.

The kids were supposed to glue the stems on the paper, then finger paint on dots for the flower buds.

Like I said, the two crafts quickly became one in the same. What REALLY happened was that most of the kids made several paintings by using the green stems (from craft #2) then stamping around them with the okra (from craft #1) and in all the different colors including the finger paints (again, from craft #2). Results below:

No big deal though. It was a big ol' mess of crafty fun. Maybe my idea was too lofty.

What worked least: I can't help but think that if I'd separated the two craft tables, we probably would have wound up with the two clearly distinctive crafts seen above. But maybe that's not necessarily better? Maybe the freedom to just make whatever kind of spring blossom was more appealing to the kids (and parents) anyway. Who knows!

What worked best: I was pleased with the books! As I said earlier this was the first time I tried both of these stories and I think they were hits!

Welcome spring! And Happy Earth Day!

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!

Tablet Tales (+ Amateur App Reviews)

This program was inspired by Nicole, my friend and fellow librarian. We ran into each other at the doctor's office one afternoon and, obviously, like everyone does, started discussing library program ideas. In our conversation, she mentioned doing a program called Tablet Tales at her library and for me, that got the wheels turning. I wanted to a program called Tablet Tales. (I've been on an alliteration kick.)

Nicole told me that for her Tablet Tales, she was planning to go through a few apps with the kids, and then, for the second half of the program, to pass out her library's iPads and Nexus 7 tablets for the families to mess around with. Her library has a whole slue of tablets for patron use... but ours doesn't. So I needed an alternative plan.

My program description read:

Did you know that there are tons of fun picture book apps? Let's enjoy "reading a few apps" together and then make a simple craft related to one of them.

So first I picked two apps. I decided on Dear Zoo and Lars and Friends. Then, instead of passing out iPads and Nexus 7s, I had the kids make a Dear Zoo craft, which I took (and modified) from Kiz Club. Maybe not as cool as tablets, but they had fun anyway!

I set up the proxima and had the iPad projected on the wall. The apps went over well!  I did Dear Zoo first, assuming (correctly) that many of the kids already knew the story. I selected the option to read the story myself, then had the kids stand up and take turns prodding the iPad, opening the different packages and making the animals move around and make noises. For this app, I probably could have done without the proxima altogether, since most of the group was focused on the actual iPad in my hand. But it was nice to have it up on the wall anyway. And I did wind up using it a lot for Lars and Friends.

Cute Dear Zoo anecdote: A bunch of the kids knew the story so well that they were able to fill in things like "but he was too grumpy!" and "but he was too scary!" before I even read the words. This was a group of true Dear Zoo fans (including the librarian)!

The app itself has 3 choices when you first open it up: "Read the Book" (that's what I did), "Read to Me," and "Picture Pairs." In "Read the Book" and "Read to Me" (both following the the story, Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell), the animals all make noise and move around a little when touched--which is a cute interactive feature that the kids really seemed to like. In the last scene (the one with the puppy), you get to throw a little red ball and play fetch with the dog. Super cute. The "Picture Pairs" selection brings you to a simple matching game with the animals from the book, which can also be adjusted to "Words and Pictures," where you make matching phrases like "Too Jumpy!" to the monkey picture or "Too Grumpy" to the camel.

Overall, it's a cute app and a great companion to the actual book BUT it's kinda glitchy! Sometimes you get trapped! Two examples: At the end of the story, when you're brought to the game of fetch, sometimes you can't get out. It's just an endless fetch game. You can't even read on to get to the last passage of the book ("He was perfect! I kept him."), because it happens after fetch. Also glitchy--after winning the "Picture Pairs" game, a cute "Congratulations!" screen pops up, but that one's another trap. Neither glitch makes the app unusable, since both occur at (at least somewhat) natural endings, but they're annoying none the less.

Also, is this app no longer available? Does anyone know? I can't find it in the app store anymore.

Anyway, then we moved on to Lars and Friends. I told the group to sit down and I did all the "iPadding" myself this time. They could just relax and enjoy the story. The app ($2.99 on iTunes) has 4 sections: "Storybook," "Puzzles," "Learn," and "Info" (which has to be unlocked by an adult and is basically just the credits).

I used "Storybook" which defaults to letting you read the story yourself but also has a little icon you can press to have it read for you. Each page is interactive, but only slightly. For the purposes of storytime, it was the perfect amount of interaction. There was movement on each page, but not so much that detracted from the story or was so much that the kids wanted to press the iPad themselves.

In the story, Lars, a horse, loves to run around. One day, the other horses are too tired to run with him and Lars has to find other things to do. So he winds up hanging out with a bunch of other different animals. The cool and different thing about Lars and Friends, is that the story focuses on what these different groups of animals are called. Some examples: a school of fish, a mob of kangaroos, a memory of elephants, a tower of giraffes, and a knot of frogs. It's cool and, yay, educational! I'm considering using this app again for future programs, maybe Books n Play for Pre-K?

The other usable sections of the app, "Puzzles," and "Learn" provide simple and educational activities. I didn't use "Puzzles" in my program (but it's exactly what it sounds like: animal puzzles, varying in their degree of difficulty) but I did use "Learn" a little after I finished the story. This section goes through 48 different kids of animals and what their "group" is called. You click the picture of the animal and it says something like, "A drove of goats," or "A mess of iguanas." This is what the screen looks like. There are 2 additional similar screens you can arrow through:

The kids liked touching the pictures and hearing the words, but I'm not sure they cared (or were even old enough to care) about what the app was actually saying. It was pretty clear by the speed at which they were pressing things that they just liked the whole action/reaction thing and not the actual, name-learning element. Eh. As long as their smiling and enjoying, I guess? Maybe a little education subtly crept in there.

Last, we moved on to the craft: Make-Your-Own Dear Zoo Books (modified from these Kiz Club printables). I pre-made each child an 8-page book as well as a pile of boxes/doors/packages printed on cardstock. Then the kids were able to color all the parts and then assemble their books with tape.

You can download the 8-page Make-Your-Own Dear Zoo book here!

You can download the pictures of boxes/doors/packages here!

What worked least: I wasn't sure how I was going to do this until I saw the group I had. Whether or not I would let the kids interact directly with the iPad would have a lot to do with the number of kids I had and also their personalities. I also wasn't sure where I was going to have them sit. Or stand. I wanted them to be able to see the apps projected on the wall, but I also wanted them within arms length of the iPad so they could be part of the interaction. Luckily, when the kids arrived, they were all kids that I knew. I positioned them next to me, sitting as I stood, facing the wall with the projected image. They were a really well-behaved group who, for the most part, understood the concept of taking turns and this helped me a lot. I probably could have looked a little more prepared upon their arrival, but really, I just didn't know how it was all going to go down until I saw who I had! It's ok. It all worked out.

What else was a little awkward: The craft was really time consuming. This program was 30-minutes long and I did the apps for 15-minutes and the craft for 15-minutes (which is what I'd planned). But nobody finished their craft in 15-minutes. Everyone wound up staying late. I think if I'd made the program 45-minutes long instead, I would have eliminated some rushy, guilty type feelings at the very end.

What was the biggest challenge: Picking two apps was nothing. I could have picked 10! But having to come up with an app-related craft...now THAT was a challenge. I'd love to do a Tablet Tales program again, especially since the apps were the highlight of the program, but there's just no way kids can sit for 30-minutes of only stories, even if they are interactive, and coming up with a craft was a major challenge for me. Instead though, I want to really make it a point to use more apps in other programs like Books n Play for Pre-K, because sometimes they're just so good!

What worked best: The apps! The kids liked interacting with the iPad a lot and I think it's always fun to see something projected big on the wall. Even when I did Lars and Friends, where the kids didn't directly interact until we did the "Learn" section at the end, they still enjoyed hearing the story and seeing the animals come to life as I read. Like a magic, animated picture book. It was really cool! Plus, I had some moms ask me about the apps, which is always a good sign. Yay!