Please! More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed!

Last night for Sleepytime Tales we shared books designed to get us up and moving!

After our normal welcome and warm up it was time for the books.

We read 'I Ain't Gonna Paint No More!' by Karen Beaumont and our library friends helped us name the parts that were painted.

We then learned the signs for the colors white, red, blue and brown along with shoes and wet and read 'Pete the Cat' by Eric Litwin. A new friend joined us to introduce our next book.



Banana, the Monkey went, well bananas, as he welcomed each of our library friends to storytime.

Banana waking himself up this morning

One of the Sleepytime Tales readers helped share our next book 'No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed' by Eileen Christelow. We learned the signs for jump and helped mama call the doctor for our injured monkey friends!  Last but certainly not least was 'Dancing Feet' by Lindsey Criag. Our library friends were encouraged to get up and move as we read about slappity, stompity and creepity feet.




Since we were up we used the activity cube rectangle. This cube rectangle is six sides cube of easy and fun activities to help keep us moving.
The activity cube rectangle idea was found on the website Little Family Fun.. While ours was more of a rectangle, we were still able to have a great time! We decorated the box with colorful paper and put instructions on each side:
The sides of the cube are:
Spin in a circle.
Hop on one foot.
Jump up and down 5 times.
Flap your arms like a bird.
Run in place.
Dance!
There were only eight children in attendance so each were able to toss the box several times.

We ended with our closing routine and the children could then play with the toys in the library or read more books.

Sleepytime Tales meets Wednesday evenings beginning at 6:30 PM and is for the whole family to enjoy.
-r

Whose Shoes? Traveling Trunk

Our celebration of Whose Shoes? A Shoe for Every Job (the Pennsylvania One Book Every Young Child selection for 2011) continued with exploration of the Traveling Trunk. The Traveling Trunk is developed by museum educators to help expand upon the concepts in Whose Shoes? A Shoe for Every Job. Each trunk is filled with fun book-related activities, games and manipulatives for young children, as well as a guide for librarians and educators that encourages use of the trunk contents in activities that are aligned with the Pennsylvania Early Learning Standards.

For Sleepytime Tales and Wee Reads we set up stations for our library friends to explore. Thursday morning we also had the added benefit of Polskie Bajki (Polish Tales) and we had special guest Ms. Margaret read Whose Shoes and A Pair of Socks by Stuart J. Murphy in Polish.

Concepts from the trunk we explored:

Literacy
-books

Shoes/socks
-lacing
-tying
-matching

Careers/Community Helpers
-Storybook Puppet Theater
-puzzles

Math and Measuring
-graphing what size our feet are
-matching
-patterns

Art
-Photography
-designing our own shoes







The stage for Storybook Puppet Theater



Office Friday and Firefighter Frank





More puppets to use in the theater




Lacing area to get lots of practice




Another lacing puzzle




Match the shoes!




Lacing and tying activities to take home




Decorate your own footwear...using animal stamps!




More matching games




Safety materials from a Grandkit




Joey...ready for his next career!




Graphing and measuring station




How big are your feet?




Library friends exploring the stations



Ms Margaret showing us her lacing skills



Storybook Puppet Theater
"We're Friends!"




Ms. Margaret helped us tie and lace




A budding photographer



Preschool Storytime...Teasing Mr. Crocodile

For Sleepytime Tales and Preschool Storytime we explored books about crocodiles, bats and the beach! Continuing our "Make a Splash! at your library" theme we also included an underwater adventure with sharks!
Signs learned (courtesy of ASLpro.com)
beach
bats
tiger
elephant
rhinoceros
shark
Books read:
Counting Crocodiles by Judy Sierra
Splash!
Bats at the Beach

Rhymes:

The Lady with the Alligator purse

Five Cheeky Monkeys (complete with Monkey paw!)

For a craft we made grinning crocodiles (found on Enchanted Learning)

Sleepytime Tales meets Wednesdays at 6:30 PM and Preschool Stories meets Thursdays at 10:30 AM.

-r

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

It's the Year of the Tiger and we celebrated by reading books with a Chinese theme!

During Sleepytime Tales and Preschool Storytime we read:
Two of Everything by Lily Toy Hong
Tikki Tikki Tembo retold by Arlene Mosel
The Pet Dragon by Christoph Niemann
Someone Says by Carole Lexa Schaefer

Since we are learning signs we signed Happy New Year, China and the song The More We Get Together (this courtesy of Amy Burns)

For our craft we created Chinese laterns

-r

Join the Shellibration!

For the second year we invited people to join us for a "Shellibration" to celebrate National Poetry Month. This year our celebration took place in April and we shared our favorite Shel Silverstein (and other favorite authors) poems as well as other activities to encourage an exploration of poetry.


An ongoing way we celebrate poetry is with our Poem-tree. Visitors to the Family Room can add a leaf with their favorite verses.

During Book Bunch we celebrated with flashlight poems. Using an idea from the Crayola web site, participants wrote poems and they were then displayed in the Family Room.





The direct link is here:
http://www.crayola.com/lesson-plans/detail/flashlight-poems-lesson-plan/

Please visit our Facebook page for more photos from the event:



For the Shellibration we read our favorite Shel Silverstein (or other author's) poems.
Afterwards we created moveable poetry. Moveable poetry is like magnetic but we used construction paper and not magnets. The idea also came from Crayola and can be accessed here:
http://www.crayola.com/free-coloring-pages/print/crayola-poetry-coloring-page/

The picture shown is a word file we

created with sight words for our moveable pieces.





Enjoy!
-r

Author Visit!

Both books are available in the Family Room!

Becky and Miss Rachee!

Children's Book Week at the Lansdowne Public Library continued during Sleepytime Tales with special guest, local author and Lansdowne resident, Becky Birtha. Ms. Birtha is the author of two wonderful picture books, Grandmama's Pride and Lucky Beans. These books are based on events from her life.

From her website:

Grandmama's Pride is a heartwarming story about the discovery of prejudice and a young girl's discovery of how unfair laws can be. Every summer, Mama, Sister, and Sarah Marie take the bus down south to visit Grandmama. The three of them sit in the back of the bus, because, as Mama says, it is the best seat. Later, on a walk into town, the girls don't drink from the water fountain because Grandmama says she'll make fresh lemon-mint iced tea when they get home. Throughout the summer, Aunt Maria teaches Sarah Marie how to read. Then Sarah Marie notices signs in town she hadn't been able to read before.

Before beginning each book Becky shared items that we would alter see illustrated through out the books including the suitcase in the following picture.

She also led us in song whenshe shared a civil rights era tune about riding the bus.

Lucky Beans is a fun book to explore math themes including guessing and estimating. Using her grandmother's win of a sewing machine as inspiration, Becky shared the tale of The Great Depression, family and based on the story of her father's mother and when she won a sewing machine. From her website:

It is the 1930s, and like many other workers during the Great Depression, Marshall Loman’s dad has lost his job. There’s not enough money, and there are too many beans. Ma cooks beans for supper every single night! Marshall is tired of eating beans. But maybe if he puts together Ma’s knowledge of beans with the lessons he’s learning in arithmetic class, they can guess how many beans are in the big jar and win the contest.

Signs learned:

Grandmother

Lucky

Beans

As both stories ran a bit long we didn't do a craft but we did share jelly beans as a storytime treat.

Both books are available for check out and we look forward to hearing what YOU thnk about the books. Please leave your comments below!

-r

Konnichiwa!

The Lansdowne Public Library was a proud participant in the of the Suburu Cherry Blossom Festival. During Sleepytime Tales and Preschool Storytime we shared Japanese themed stories.

Books shared:

The Mouse's Wedding a Kamishibai play from Japan

The beckoning cat : based on a Japanese folktale by Koko Nishizuka ; illustrated by Rosanne Litzinger.

The Paper Crane by Molly Bang

Signs: (from words read in The Mouse's Wedding)

Mouse

Wedding

Sun

Wind

Cloud

We have been using Aslpro for assistance with the signs.

Craft:

A lucky origami Crane. Miss Amanda was available last night to show us a traditional fold. We also had access to the 'easy' version.

Miss Amanda showing how to make the crane

The Easy Crane

Join us Wednesdays at 6:30 or Thursdays at 10:30 for storytime!

Sayonara!

-r

Sleepytime Tales...With the Doctor!

Dr. Seuss that is!

We read books by Dr. Seuss during a special Seussical Celebration. Guest readers were Miss. Amanda and Mr. Anthony.

-r