International Talk Like a Pirate Day

According to this website, International Talk Like a Pirate Day officially started in 2002, and has been going strong for a full 15 years and counting! Yet for some reason, it took me until 2017 to do a library program acknowledging it. So finally, this year, it happened. I remembered the date, got it in the newsletter, and planned the program in time to acknowledge International Talk Like a Pirate Day 2017-- and it was entirely mediocre! 

In fact, this might officially wind up being my shortest blog post yet because there's just, straight up, nothing to say. I set the room up for fifteen kids but had a total of three + one little brother and three adults. 😞 (Unrelated: there are symbols on Blogger now! Hooray!)

Anyway, I started out with two books: Pirate Pete Lynne Benton (which is an easy reader) and Pirate Nap: A Book of Colors by Danna Smith. I can't say I was totally wild about either book but I had a hard time finding age-appropriate, storytime-appropriate books and these two, at the very least, filled the need. They kids seemed to feel the same way I did about the books-- eh. 

Then we learned some pirate lingo. I made this slideshow, which I printed out front-and-back, so that it would have the regular English on the front and the "Pirate English" on the back. I found that holding up the regular English, having the kids try to guess, and then turning the page around was a lot of fun for everyone!

A PDF of the whole slideshow is available to download and use here! 

Then we moved on to hat decorating, which was 100% thanks to this kit from Oriental Trading, but was a lot of fun too!

And last, we played Pirate Ship Ring Toss, which was possibly the highlight of the program. And how could it not be? There was a huge, inflatable pirate ship and throwing things involved!

On the way out, I gave them pirate bouncy balls to take home. We had them in storage so this was a good chance to get rid of them, and the kids were excited about them too!

What worked least: I hate to say it, but I have to: The books were totally the least fun part of this program. They were just blah. I looked through SO many but I just never found any pirate books that I felt excited about. Too bad!

What worked best: Pirate Ship Ring Toss. You can't beat it. The kids were absolutely enthralled with the inflatable pirate ship from the moment they entered the room.

Grandparents' Day Brunch n Craft

For the past two years, admittedly, Grandparents' Day has been a little bit of an afterthought. Because it's in early September, a Grandparents' Day program needs to make its way into the summer newsletter and, for whatever reason, I just don't think about it until about mid-July. Therefore, Grandparents' Day programs of the past have always wound up being drop in crafts. 

But this year was different. This year MY parents became grandparents and Grandparents' Day was a little more in the forefront of my brain. I totally made a huge deal over it. And so we have...

Grandparents' Day Brunch n Craft! Here is my family (including me!) enjoying it:

The program, I'll admit, was awesome. I'll start with the food spread.

The menu above (which was handed out to each grandparent as they entered the room) lists everything we had. It says as follows: Light roast coffee, hot chocolate, bagels with cream cheese and butter, Munchkins, orange juice, fruit salad, and Cheerios with milk. 

Please note: I advertised this as a "light brunch spread" to make sure nobody had irrational, omelet-station-caliber expectations. 

Everyone loves a brunch!

 

And now, on to the crafts! In the newsletter, I touted  "crafts for all ages," so I had to make sure there was something for everyone. It's a good thing I did! I had kids as young as under 1 (ahem, that was my own daughter) and kids as old as 4th grade! Here's what we did:

Hug in an Envelope

I found this craft here. Basically, it's two traced hands strung onto ribbon with hearts in the middle. The center heart (the big, pink one) has a message for grandma/grandpa, and the hearts on each side of it say "Grandma" (or Grammy or Nanna or whatever) and "Grandpa" (or Poppy or Pop-pop or whatever). The sample above is a real sample made by a patron to help me out with this program. I also put out white envelopes for the kids to decorate and then put their "hugs" in, and stickers for sealing them up.

Finger Paint Pictures

I did this craft back in June 2016 in a program called Munchkins with Mommy and Donuts with Daddy. It's a quick craft for the younger crowd and was inspired by this gem on Pinterest. To make it, I found a picture of a dandelion stem online, altered it a tiny bit, added some text, and printed it on card stock. Then the kids finger painted on colorful seeds. Easy and fun! They also had fun improvising more finger paint art along the way.

Paper Plate Awards

I swiped this idea from something similar that I found on Pinterest. I kept it easy by using paper plates that were already gold (these from Oriental Trading). Then I put out pre-punched circles for writing on (because you can't write, even with a Sharpie, on these paper plates without it being a total smudge-fest), pre-cut blue ribbon bottoms (I had a page do this), foam hearts and flowers for decorating (these from Oriental Trading), plus markers, glue and tape. It was cute!

Strawberry Foot Prints

Strawberry foot prints was our "baby craft" and I had three babies present to make it! The sample above (taped to the wall next to the sign) was made by my own sweet, little Sadie. The craft is pretty self-explanatory: Paint baby's feet red, stamp them on white paper (pointing inward if possible), paint green leaves, and add a message (which, in my sample, was "You are berry special!") Then, when the paint is dry, the kindly librarian (me) will add black dots for seeds, cut it out, and laminate the whole finished product for you take home! Here are some pre-dotted, pre-laminated, pre-cut foot berries and the babies who made them:

What worked least: This program was SO much fun. It really felt like a true success. If I were forced to decide on something that didn't work though, I'd say that I wish there could have been a more streamlined way to do the strawberry foot prints. Like, I wish there was way to magically have them dry faster so I could have laminated them on the spot, instead of having to hold on to them until later. But, of the three families who did this craft, one came back a few hours later in the day to pick up the print and was super happy to do so, one mom comes in all the time anyway so I just held hers for her until next time, and one was my daughter. So, really, it totally worked out fine!

What worked best: Totally has nothing to do with the program itself, but having my own family in attendance made the day SO much fun! I loved spending Grandparents' Day with so many great family while still getting to be with my own!

Stories in the Garden

My blog hasn't been getting much attention this summer because, instead of exciting-looking, blog-worthy parties and crafts at work, I've been hosting weekly simple programs for lots of different age groups: Musical Kids, Stop In Stories, and--new for this summer and the subject of today's post--Stories in the Garden!

My library is on a busy main street without any outdoor space whatsoever so it's really a special treat to have any kind of program out of the building. When I found out that my coworker arranged for us to be able to borrow the garden from the church across the street, I was SO excited to be part of it! (To be fair, it was March and I was still wearing boots, so it's possible that that played a small roll.) I wanted to make sure we fit lots of different age groups into the outdoor fun, so I did one session for ages 6-16 months, and one for ages 17 months-5 years. 

The big challenge with this program was that, since there were no outlets, I didn't have access to any recorded music--something I tend to rely heavily on in most of my programs for this age group. This meant that I had to come up with some new material: New songs, new parachute games, and--the most dramatic of all--a new hello and goodbye song! (Anyone who's ever stepped foot in one of my programs knows that I have been a loyal fan of Big Jeff's A New Way to Say Hello and Laurie Berkner's Blow a Kiss for what feels like forever).

The program, other than having totally weird-for-me hello and goodbye songs, went really well. On rainy days it was held inside and even then it was still fun, albeit slightly less well-attended. 

Here's me, barefoot (a nice perk), and ready to sing Five Little Ducks:

Since, above all else, this was a storytime, I'm going to list all the books that were read over the course of this program.

B = Baby class (6 - 16 months)

T = Toddler class (17-months - 5-years)

Are You My Mommy? by Mary Murphy (B)

Babies on the Bus by Karen Katz (B, T)

Baby Faces by Margaret Miller (B)

Baby Parade by Rebecca O'Connell (B, T)

Baby Pets by Margaret Miller (B)

Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton (B, T)

Breathe by Scott Magoon (B, T)

Cat the Cat, Who Is That? by Mo Willems (B, T) *

Elephant and Piggie: Elephants Cannot Dance by Mo Willems (T) *

First the Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger(B, T)

From Head to Toe by Eric Carle (T)

Hello Lamb by Jane Cabrera (B)

Hi Pizza Man! by Virgina Walter (T)

Jump by Scott M. Fischer (B, T)

Peek-a-Boo Zoo! by Jane Cabrera (B, T)

Pete the Cat: I Love My While Shoes by James Dean and Eric Litwin (T)

Pouch! by David Ezra Stein (B, T)

Say Hello Like This by Mary Murphy (B, T)

Toot Toot, Beep Beep by Emma Garcia (B, T)

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (B, T)**

* Mo Willems' books are PERFECT for two-librarian storytimes! Andrea (of Disney Princess Tea and Mall Storytime) and I have totally mastered these! Reading Elephant and Piggie: Elephants Cannot Dance with Andrea feels like straight up acting, which is kind of fun, and Cat the Cat, Who Is That? has a sort of "call and response" feel, which flows a lot more naturally with two readers. Lately I try to work a Mo Willems book in every time I know there will be another librarian able to read with me.

** I've written briefly about our wonderful Very Hungry Caterpillar kit in the past before, but it's truly a wonderful storytime prop! The kids love holding up all the signs and "feeding" the different things to the caterpillar puppet throughout the story. They also like sticking their heads through the giant holes, as seen below.

Doing a storytime outside was SO much fun with both age groups, and coming up with a new hello and goodbye song turned out to be easy enough. Thanks to Jbrary (as usual), here is the song we used:

We Clap and Say Hello/Goodbye (to the tune of The Farmer In the Dell):

We clap and say hello
We clap and say hello
With our friends at storytime, we clap and say hello
We stomp and say hello
We stomp and say hello
With our friends at storytime, we stomp and say hello
We nod...
We jump...
We wave...

(I altered the actions a bit on a whim if it felt right for the group.)

Here's a picture of my baby group (and three moms) melting in the sweltering sun one week:

What worked least: Relying on the weather is something I'm not used to doing for a program. There was really only one week (the last week) where the weather was REALLY good, not to hot, not too wet. And actually, one week, it was so insanely stormy out that, even though I held the program it inside, nobody came to the baby class.

What worked best: The parachute, always! And what's more fun that the parachute OUTSIDE?! Hint: Not much.

Construction and Building Competition

For the past three Julys, my coworker, Corinna, and I have planned a fun, Summer Reading Club-themed competition at our branch library. Two years ago we hosted Super Hero Training Camp; last year we hosted Olympic Training Camp. And this year, we did a Construction and Building Competition. They have all be SO MUCH FUN. (But I am already racking my brain for activities to accommodate next year's music-theme and coming up completely empty).

To start, we gave each kid a hard* hat that was labeled "Construction and Building Competition" on the front and had their name written on the back, which, to be silly, I wrote as their first initial and their last name (ie: S. Jones).

*Hat was not actually hard at all.

We sat them all down and talked to them about things like how Corinna and I were the "site managers" and how they had to follow our rules in their construction projects. Then it was time to begin the activities, which went as follows:

Marshmallow Towers

The goal of "Marshmallow Towers" was to create the most aesthetically pleasing marshmallow-and-toothpick creation possible. It didn't have to be big. It didn't have to be strong. It just had to look pretty. We gave them 10-minutes, and off they went. When the time was up, we had to declare a winner. Corinna and I knew for sure that we wanted one winner and no "loser." We also knew that we didn't want to be the decision-makers. So we had the kids come up to us one at a time, whisper their favorite (other then their own) in our ear so nobody could hear, and then calculated the results. Luckily, there wound up being a clear winner.

Bridge Building

Split into two teams (Boys vs girls, naturally), the goal of Bridge Building was to make a bridge between two tables that supported the most weight. It didn't matter how ugly or pretty it was-- it just had to be strong. We gave the kids 15-minutes for this one (they kept asking for more and more time!) and had them use piles of popsicle sticks (both the thin kind and the thick kind), masking tape, and sticky putty (this kind).

They did a great job and I was surprised how much weight the two bridges were able to bear. Once their time was (finally) up, we tested the bridges--first with one rock, then with two rocks, then with a whole pound of rocks. Although the 1 lb bag had to be place strategically on the strongest part of the boys bridge, both bridges were able to hold an entire pound of rocks! How exciting! Then we tried two pounds and, of course, both bridges broke. So it was a tie!

I got the idea for this contest from The Ardent Teacher.

Human Bridge Tester

The wood plank and baby pool, in some form or another, have become summer competition staples. Two years ago, in Super Hero Training Camp, we dyed the pool water red, called it a lava pit, and had the kids cross over the pit on the plank. Last year, in Olympic Training Camp, we had the kids run through  the pool as the "swimming" portion of our "triathlon" and used the plank as a balance beam. But this year was the easiest! We filled the baby pool with water, put the plank of wood over it (attached with duct tape to two stools), called it a bridge, and had the kids "test" it by walking across it and making a silly pose/face in the middle. There was no judging or winning for this event; it was just for fun.

Ultimate Oreo

The goal of Ultimate Oreo was to build the tallest Oreo cookie possible in 5-minutes. I found this game on Stumingamescom, but decided to have the kids work individually instead of as teams. Using nothing but a bunch of Oreos and a plastic knife, they had to make the tallest, craziest, most ultimate Oreo cookie possible. They needed to have one cookie on the bottom, as much frosting as possible in the middle, and one more cookie on top. Then, after 5-minutes, we stacked the "ultimate cookies" up next to each other to see who'd made the tallest one. This was what it looked like:

Spoon & Block Catapults

This was a catapult building contest that involved wooden blocks, plastic spoons, rubber bands, and  ping-pong balls. The kids had to band the spoons to the blocks, then use that to catapult ping-pong balls across the room. Initially, this was a contest to see who could get theirs to soar the farthest, but it quickly just became noncompetitive catapulting. In fact, it became more of a cooperative game, as the kids were encouraging and helping each other! Great to see!

Cookie Head Tower

After lots of Googling for ideas, this was the last game that I found, here. Again in teams (and again, boys vs girls), the kids had to choose one member from each team to be the "cookie balancer" (ideally, this is the person who can lie on the floor the most still and not laugh). Then the other two members of the each team had 2-minutes to stack Chips Ahoy on the cookie balancer's head, as high as possible. If the cookies fell, they had to start over. The boys definitely giggled less, but in the end, once both towers had fallen and been rebuilt several times, the girls squeaked by--2 cookies to 0 cookies. Mostly though, this was just about having fun and giggling.

Tower Destroying

As a "reward for all their hard work," this final activity gave the kids a chance to destroy something instead of build something. Except the irony here is that, after the tower was destroyed once, the kids were all excited to rebuild it for the next person in line. Again, cooperation and helping each other were big themes here!

At the end of the hour, we gave the kids certificates, took a group photo, and let them snack on some (clean) Oreo and Chips Ahoy cookies.

What worked least: I think this may have been the last year for our wood plank. While everything worked out totally fine, the Human Bridge Tester activity gave me a bad case of wood-breaking anxiety. Our wood plank had a great, three-year-run, but I am ready to say goodbye to it.

Work worked best: Totally surprisingly, Bridge Building was awesome! It was so satisfying to see the kids work in teams (with other kids they'd never met before) and make bridges that could support a whole pound! And they really enjoyed it much more than I'd expected them to!

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!