Election Time is coming! Cast Your Vote!

A few years ago we held elections for who would be President of the Family Room. Of the five candidates, Owlbert Owl, Woolette Sheep, Inky Octopus, Mr. Dino and Inchy Worm, the winner was Owlbert Owl, as chosen by library visitors. He is up for re-election and the library needs your help once again to vote for family room mascot and president.

The candidates are:

Mr. Dino

Inchy Worm

Woolette Sheep

Inky Octopus

Owlbert Owl

Join us for special storytimes on Thursday, October 23rd at 10:30AM and Monday, November 3rd at 10:00AM to learn more about the candidates.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 4th and you can cast your vote for Family Room Mascot! Inchy Worm, Owlbert Owl, Mr. Dino, Woolette Sheep, and Inky Octopus all want your vote!

Wee Reads: Welcome to the Jungle!

Today Wee Reads took a trip to the jungle as we shared a jungle themed storytime with books and rhymes.


Books shared
We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury
Where the Wild Things Are Story and Pictures by Maurice Sendak
The Animal Boogie by Debbie Harter

Rhymes:
Back in the Jungle
Five Little Monkeys (with monkey paw)
Five Cheeky Monkeys (with monkey paw and crocodile puppet)

Activity cube
We have added plastic page protectors to change the activities to fit whatever theme we are

Craft
Hidden jungle animals.

Wee Reads Art Dreams!

Hi Friends!
Today we explored colors and art during our preschool storytime.


We started with our usual warm ups and welcome song.
We do the same warm ups each week:

Reach for the ceiling

Reach for the Ceiling"

Reach for the ceiling,

Touch the floor,

Stand up again,

Let's do some more.

Touch your head,

Touch your knee,

Up to your shoulders,

Like this, you see?

Reach for the ceiling,

Touch the floor,

That's all for now,

There is no more.

I Clap My Hands

I Clap My Hands

I clap my hands      clap hands 

I touch my feet   touch feet 

I jump up from the ground.    jump up

I clap my hands   clap hands 

I touch my feet    touch feet 

I turn myself around.   turn around

I clap my hands    clap hands 

I touch my feet   touch feet 

I sit myself right down.    sit down

I clap my hands   clap hands 

I touch my feet    touch feet 

I do not make a sound.   sit quietly 

Shhh!     

We sign The More We Get Together and today we added the sign for paint and changed the song accordingly. 

The More We Get Together

The more we get together,

together, together,

The more we get together,

The happier we’ll be.

For your friends are my friends,

And my friends are your friends.

The more we get together,

The happier we’ll be. 

We read the following books:

Books Read:
Matthew's Dream by Leo Lionni
Color Dance by Ann Jonas
I Ain't Gonna Paint No More by Karen Beaumont

We also learned signs for colors and sang "The Rainbow Song" (this video was one found on You Tube)










For a storytime souvenir, children could create a mosaic using small pieces of paper or colorful foam shapes, draw a picture of whatever they wanted using crayons or markers.

Wee Reads meets Thursdays at 10:30 AM.
All are invited to attend.
-r

Wee Reads is for the Birds!

Today Wee Reads shared books about birds as we welcomed Spring and celebrated the return of open windows and the lovely sound of our feathered friends.

We began by making bird puppets using a template from Family Fun and children were allowed to decorate their birds any way they liked.

These foam shapes are a favorite!

Today Ms. Abbe was available and played her ukulele for our normal warm-ups. We learned the sign for bird and read a storytime favorite, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems.  The group enjoyed all of the ways the pigeon tries to get their permission to drive the bus.

Can we get enough of this book?
No!

Miss Abbe played a modified version of Mama Don't Allow, substituting bird references for the words. 

Next we shared Round Robin by Jack Kent. The kids loved this book and parents laughed too as poor Round Robin bumped his way south for the winter. 

Very well loved read

After reading Round Robin we helped feed him with bubbles! A friend generously donated bubbles to the library and we blew them all over the family room to help feed Round Robin.
Join us for storytime on Thursdays beginning at 10:30 AM.

-r

Wee Reads: Secret Agent Training

Agent R here to report on a special event for our Wee Reads group...Secret Agent Training! Our preschool group gathered to become the newest members of the Lansdowne Public Library elite spy guild. We started off with our regular stretches to help loosen limbs - just in case danger came about!  We then shifted focus to having recruits listen to spy themed books.

First up was I Spy Lightening in the Sky by Jean Marzollo, illustrated by Walter Wick. Our eagle eyed trainees found cunningly hidden pictures throughout the text. To prepare for the next book we practiced disguising our voices by screaming and then whispering the alphabet while learning the ASL alphabet. We used these skills to read Agent A to Agent Z by Andy Rash. Finally we practiced our acting skills and the art of being double agents when we took on characters from the Backyardiganns from the book Agent Secret.

Laser beams...careful!

Afterwards agents were charged with physical tasks. We set up laser beams in one of the aisles and agents had to make their way through! We perfected the art of disguise with phony mustaches. There was a scavenger hunt in the Family Room created to keep those sharp eyes, sharp.

At the end of the hour agents were all awarded a prize for completing the hunt as well as a secret code sheet to practice codes at home!

Books on spying, codes, and costumes were on display to help agents practice their craft at home.

Wee Reads is for ages 3-6 and meets Thursdays at 10:30 am. Join us for future quests.

Respectfully submitted by Agent R

Agent R

Agents Mario and Luigi

Scavenger hunters!

Our books held by an Agent 

A display of titles.
These were a question on the scavenger hunt

note: This blog post will self-destruct in five seconds! (kidding!)

Pizza! Pizza!

For storytime today we used an idea from Abby the Librarian and read books about pizza! 

After our normal storytime greetings and welcome song we brought out the books.

Signs learned: 

Pizza

Books read:

Margaret and H.A. Rey's Curious George and The Pizza. 

"Hi, Pizza Man!" by Virginia Walter

Pete's a Pizza by William Steig

The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza retold by Philemon Sturges

Songs/Other activities

Recently the library acquired scarves and they were passed out when we used Abby's song suggestion

Baking Pizza. I passed out colorful scarves and as we sang this song together, we pretended the scarves were pizza dough. I did it once slowly to teach the kids the motions and then we did it again a little faster and they loved it!

(To the tune of Shortnin' Bread.) 

I can make a pizza! You can, too!
Listen and you'll know just what to do. 

Every little baker loves mixing, mixing

Every little baker loves mixing dough!

Every little baker loves kneading, kneading

Every little baked loves kneading dough!

Every little baker loves tossing, tossing

Every little baker loves tossing dough!

Song: Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. 

This was our stretch before reading Pete's a Pizza and "making pizzas" with stuffed animals. I also used Abby's explanation that since we'd been eating and talking so much about pizza this storytime, we needed to do a little exercise and work some of it off. In addition to singing the song regular, fast, and super fast, we used The Wiggles version and each round would only point but not say the body part (head, shoulder, knees and toes).

Who Stole the Pizza?
Who stole the pizza from the pizza pan?
Lion stole the pizza from the pizza pan!
Who me? Yes, you!
Couldn't be! Then who?
Repeat with other puppets.

Children could then select a puppet to use as we read Pete's a Pizza.

For a craft we colored and made pizza using the template from Free Kid's Crafts.

Join us for Wee Read Thursdays at 10:30 AM.

-r

Wee Czytaj w kolorze!*

Thursday, July 7th, during Wee Read we had our monthly bilingual storyhor, Polske Bajki. Ms. Margaret joined us awe read our stories and translated them into Polish for us.

Today we started with a colorful book about a negative little boy: David Shannon's No, David! (Nie, David!)
Then we learned signs for colors and read Sheila Hamanaka's All the Colors of the Earth and Dr. Suess's My Many Color Days.

For our craft we made a cool color game: ice cream color match game.

Wee Read meets Thursdays at 10:30 AM.
-r





*Wee Read in Color

Wee Reads: On the Road Again!

Today for Wee Reads our books took us on a road trip!
We started with our usual warm ups and welcome song, The More We Get Together. Today we added signs and verses to sing the more we FLY together and learned the signs for FLY and AIRPLANE.
The books we read were
Punk Farm on Tour by Jarrett J Krosoczka.
Flying by Donald Crews.
My Travelin' Eye by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw.

We rocked out with Punk Farm On Tour, doing some head banging moves as we read about the group's first tour. Their new song is a familiar tune (The Wheels on the Bus) but we added out own spin and the group helped rock the song as we read.

As we read Flying we made the sign for airplane and used our 'airplanes' to fly around with us.

For My Travelin' Eye we helped Jenny Sue complete her eye exam and this is the book that inspired our craft for today. In the book to help correct Jenny Sue's lazy eye an ophthalmologist orders her to wear an eye patch. Our Wee Read friends were given eye patches to decorate and came up with exciting creations!

We had a full house!

Wee Reads meets Thursday at 10:30 AM. Join us for books, activities and more!
-r

A Few of Our Favorite Books!

Wee Reads was a hodgepodge of activities today! Due to illness we postponed our Children's Book Week activities until today. Ms. Margaret joined us for Polske Bajki, our bilingual Polish/English storytime, and we had a blast reading our favorite books!

We read
Click Clack Moo by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Betsy Lewin
As we read Click, Clack, Moo our library friends helped us with 'typing' and mooing.

I Ain't Gonna Paint No More! by Karen Beaumont, illustrated by David Catrow
As we read our library friends helped us by shouting out the body parts that were being painted.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
While reading this book we helped the caterpillar eat his way through the week using a cool puppet that a friend made for us.

For a craft we used a variation of DLTK's Bouncy Caterpillar and made caterpillars and a hybrid caterpillar/butterfly.

Enjoy!

The caterpillar is now a fat caterpillar!

He's eating a leaf

Our friends showing the little caterpillar eating a leaf






The butterfly emerging from the cocoon







A caterpillar butterfly hybrid






The creative process

 

A friend showing her caterpillar





How wings are made!

Wee Reads is our preschool storytime. We meet Thursdays beginning at 10:30!

Polske Bajki is a our monthly bilingual storytime.





 

Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum...

Inspired by Kristin at the Swarthmore Public Library, Wee Reads and The Book Bunch went crazy with books about giants and had huge fun pretending everything around us was smaller than us.

Our reading list:
Chicken Big by Keith Graves
I think the adults in the room enjoyed this as much as the children!


How to Make Friends with a Giant by Gennifer Choldenko
Which generated a surprisongliklively discussion about acceptance, differences.

The groups had a blast making books for giants (large pages and lots of staples!) and teeny tiny books that were 'left in the giant's castle when Jack ran out!'