I Spy: A Story Time for Toddlers

My colleague Miss Melanie usually presents programming for two-year-olds at my branch, but when she took a well-earned vacation last week, I stepped in to lead her program (Note: I like to plan my own content if I have advance notice, but I of course will follow a colleague's program plan if asked/in called-in-sick situations). Seeing a new face at the front of the story time room can be a bit jarring for many toddlers who grow accustomed to the way things usually run, so I packed my story time with tons of interactive activities to keep everyone engaged and happy. Here's what I did:

"I Spy" Story Time

Pre-program: As I am notoriously awful at names, I found some paper dessert-size plates and wrote on them the names of the children who were registered to attend. I asked kids and caregivers to find their nameplates as they came in. (Turns out, these kids held on tight to their nameplates the whole program. They loved them.)

Opening Greeting: Miss Melanie usually greets her kiddos with a sort of chant: "Hello, ______!" (Think "Let's go, Blackhawks!"). I replicated this greeting for each child, and I got all of the names correct because of the aforementioned pre-program nameplates.

Songs: These two-year-olds regularly sing a few songs in their program; the repetition from week to week is important for establishing a level of comfort and familiarity to story time, and it also gives two-year-olds the opportunity to actually learn a song instead of just miming the story time leader. We shared:

• "Where is Thumbkin?"
• "Head, Shoulders, Knees, & Toes"

Stories: I gauged the level of audience engagement to figure out the best time to share our stories. Both stories involve kids using their hands to create a spyglass (or telescope, or binoculars) so they can help spy items in the book's pages.

• I Spy on the Farm by Edward Gibbs
• Shark in the Park! by Nick Sharratt

Activities:

• I Spy What Animals Eat - Using green poster board, green cardstock, Velcro dots, and pieces from my library's assorted flannelboard collection, I put together bushes with foods hiding under the leaves; sometimes the foods were fruits, other times they were pizza or muffins. After demonstrating an elephant and a zebra hand puppet who like to find and eat fruit, I passed out puppets to let the kids help their animals spy what they wanted to eat. Kids would lift the leaf flaps to spy the foods in the bushes.
• Parachute Time - With our good-sized group, caregivers helped me move the parachute over the kids' heads as they explored underneath. After one round of "Colors Over You," one child got it in his mind to try to use the parachute as a slip-n-slide. Thus it was time to put the parachute away.
• I Spy Bottles - Using a model similar to Brooke's, I created I Spy bottles filled with beads for kids to turn and observe. I used bottles of craft sand for the container, and I mixed in beads that looked like animals as well as letter beads. I superglued those lids shut, and they've held up so far. Some of the kids were absolutely mesmerized by the activity of turning the bottles and looking at the different hidden items.

Craft: For our group process art craft, we focused on fine motor skills by sticking different colors and shapes of stickers on our own spyglasses (paper towel tubes).

Bubbles! It's a tradition in our twos programming to end with the bubble machine. The kids really look forward to seeing, playing in, and popping the bubbles, and the bubbles serve to gently signal that story time is ending.

Menu of Library Services for Children & Teens

I had a meeting last week with some local homeschooling parents. The purpose of the meeting was to open up lines of communication between the library and these library customers--to start a discussion about what expectations we have for one another, and the sorts of services the library is equipped to provide.

To support this conversation and give parents a reference for what the library offers to their children, my library district came up with a Menu of Library Services for Children & Teens. This one page, front-and-back document highlights the variety of programs and services available to all families and groups in the community. It mentions preschool, school-age, and teen programs that the library offers on an ongoing basis; reference and interlibrary loan services; meeting room reservations; and downloadable resources ranging from ebooks and eaudio to magazines and music.

The part of this menu that was of most interest to the parents with whom I met, however, was the section describing available programs for groups. Every parent in this meeting had been unaware of the types of programs the library is equipped to offer upon request (with some restrictions for availability and staffing). We can offer:

• Library Tours -- We can customize a tour to fit the ages and needs of the group, throw in a story, and wrap everything up with a learning-reinforcing scavenger hunt.
• Book Group Events -- We can facilitate a discussion where every child has read the same book; we can facilitate a discussion wherein children talk about the different books they've read (peer reviews are great for inspiring reluctant readers!); and we can host events bursting with librarian-led book talks to entice readers.
• Electronic Resources Workshops -- We can offer information- and resource-specific workshops that give children exposure to and practice with any of the library's diverse electronic databases.
• Speakers -- Three branches in my district boast librarian specialists in health resources, business and nonprofit resources, and genealogy and local history, and these specialists can give presentations on their subject areas. We also have librarians equipped to talk about storytelling, early literacy, and finding "just right reads."

These a la carte menu items, if you will, were a delightful surprise for the homeschooling parents with whom I met. These are the sorts of library services they want--getting their kids acclimated to the library and how it works, exploring in-depth research options--but had previously been unaware of.

I'm excited that my library district now has a formal, printed menu of services that librarians like me can use as a reference when having conversations with caregivers interested in finding out what's available for their kids. Even more than that, however, I'm excited that we've opened the lines of communication between the library and a core group of our heavy users, homeschooling families. The more we understand one another, the better our relationship will be.

Playground Adventures: A STEAM Program

I had a great conversation with a library mom the other day. She came to tell me how much her son enjoys the school-age science programs at my branch, and she asked if I had heard of something called STEAM--STEM with an A. Oh, boy. Do I need to tell you how excited I was to have a conversation about STEAM, one of my favorite things in the whole wide world, with this enthusiastic customer? It was great! And even better, I was able to tell her about our upcoming STEAM programs--including Playground Adventures, which she brought her son to after our conversation. I love when these sorts of interactions happen.

But let's talk about Playground Adventures. My thought process for the program was to combine some information about and examples of simple machines with a hands-on crafty/building/making activity. After I attended a STAR_Net webinar called Playful Building, I knew playgrounds were the perfect premise for this program.

We started off talking about simple machines. I asked the kids in attendance (about a dozen) what they already knew about simple machines, then I talked about some of the common ones. I used everyday objects as examples: inclined track and train from the train table for inclined plane; doorstop for wedge; yo-yo for pulley; catapult for lever. As I talked about and demonstrated each machine, I asked the kids to think about where they might see these machines at work on the playground. They had great ideas.

Then we spent the rest of the program time--45 minutes--building our own playgrounds. I set out legal-size paper as the building base, and I assembled a variety of other materials for building as well: different colors of paper, drinking straws, assorted wooden pieces, thimbles, yarn... We had tape and a hot glue gun for assembling playground parts (I wielded the hot glue gun), and markers and colored pencils were available for optional embellishment. These kids spent the entirety of the remaining 45 minutes deep in their building processes, coming up with great playground ideas and very smart engineering problem-solving decisions to build what they had envisioned. The resulting playgrounds were varied and great, and the children described them to me with definite pride.

Despite how relatively simple and low-intensity the program was, all of the kids thanked me profusely for offering the program. That response serves to reinforce my belief that one of the key things we (libraries) can provide for children is a space in which they feel comfortable to explore their own ideas.

Mario Kart Tournament: Gaming in the Library

One of my goals in offering children's programs in my branch library is to promote materials in our collection. My colleagues and I do a pretty good job of promoting books, audiobooks, music CDs, and DVDs in our programming, but we hadn't really tapped the videogames collection. This summer, I rectified that deficiency by offering two Mario Kart Tournaments on one of our district's Wiis.

I heard from a lot of kids after the program, and they all said they had a fun time having a friendly competition at the library. Lots of kids play Mario Kart at home or on their portable DS consoles, but they don't always get the chance to race other kids--which makes gaming at the library great. Many parents also expressed their thanks at offering the event, which took place over the course of 2.5 hours on a Saturday in June and again in July. It gets pretty darn hot in the summer here, and I love making the library a destination for a cool activity.

Here's how I ran the tournament:

Practice Rounds - As children entered the program room, I asked them to please fill out notecards with their names and ages. I kept the cards in the order in which children arrived, and that sequence made up the order for our initial practice races. Some teen volunteers helped me set up the Wii so that four children could race at a time; they also set the game so that a "round" equalled two games, and while racers could choose their characters and vehicles, the racetrack was selected randomly. Each child got to race two practice races during the first part of our program.

The Tournament - Once every child had completed the practice rounds, the tournament began. I created a bracket using those name/age cards I had the kids fill out, and I made the bracket pairings by ages. Thus, in the first round of the tournament, 6-year-olds were racing other 6- and 7-year-olds, 12-year-olds were racing other 12- and 13-year-olds, etc. The tournament happened with the same settings as the practice rounds, which meant each bracket pairing raced on two tracks to determine the overall race winner. That winner would move on to the next bracket, which I again paired by ages. The way Mario Kart keeps score, racing twice means that two players may end up tied for first place; in these instances, both first place racers advanced to the next round of the tournament. We kept progressing through the tournament bracket in this fashion until we were down to the final four-person race.

While Kids Were Waiting - I knew that with a large group of children (I had 48 at my June program, 20 at the July), kids would have to wait a while between turns racing. I made plans for them to have plenty to do while they waited:

• snacks - I had chips, Mario fruit snacks, and drinks available, one each per child
• watching/cheering - I set up a close viewing area right in front of the wall where we projected the races, and folks could also sit at tables behind the racers; I did set the only rule, which was "only cheering, no jeering"
• coloring - I had blank paper as well as coloring sheets available; a few kids opted to create certificates for the eventual winners
• trophy creation - our local odds-and-ends store includes a bin of random trophy parts, so I bought a small bag of them and let the kids created their own trophies for the tournament; I explained that the trophies would remain in the library with winners' names nearby

The Timing - The way the timing breaks down has a lot to do with how many people enter the tournament; set your program capacity so that your tournament lasts the amount of time you want it to. In our two tournaments, not everyone stayed for the whole program; some folks left after they had been eliminated from the tournament, or had grown a bit bored of watching the races.

The Winners - I made a big fanfare out of the final round of races, using my best sports announcer voice to give something like a play-by-play. (Note: It's a good thing I'm a librarian and not a sports announcer.) When the winners were evident, I presented the trophies as well as the other pictures and certificates that some of the children had made. Many kids wanted their pictures taken with their trophies, and once that was done, I made name cards to accompany the trophies on their display on a prominent shelf in the library. The trophies are still up on that shelf, proclaiming the names of the tournament winners for all library visitors to see.

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Do you have questions about this program? Have you offered something similar at your library for school-age kids? Let me know in the comments!

Where You Can Find Me Online Today

I've got posts on two other youth services blogs today; I hope you'll click over to read them if you're interested.

First, I'm on the ALSC Blog talking about my Egg Drop program, a school-age science program that was a huge hit with my kiddos last month. Steal the program!

I'm also over on GreenBeanTeenQueen, where Sarah has been running a series called "So You Want to Read Middle Grade," featuring all sorts of guest bloggers. When she asked me if I wanted to participate, I got very excited at the prospect of bringing older readers back to the great MG they may have missed since they "aged out." I even mention Doctor Who.

Happy reading!

July Milk & Cookies Story Morning

For this month's edition of my library's Milk & Cookies Story Morning, a great group of mostly 2- to 4-year-olds gathered in the programming room. It's been hot here in Missouri, so families willing to brave the heat to come to the library enjoy getting to relax in our air-conditioned spaces for a while. I'm happy to give them opportunities for hanging around in a program like this:

Opening Song: "Open, Shut Them"

Story: The Watermelon Seed by Greg Pizzoli
     This bright, simply illustrated picture book hits on a topic that doesn't seem too far-fetched to most youngsters: a crocodile who loves watermelon accidentally swallows a seed, and he's worried he's got a watermelon growing in his belly. This book offers great opportunities for talking about what seeds need to grow, what happens when you swallow something, etc., as well as a perfect invitation for giggles when the crocodile gives a giant burp.

Song: "We're Going to Kentucky"
     I learned this song at Guerrilla Storytime at #ala2013, and I've used it many times since. For this story morning group, I handed out egg shakers to accompany our shaking as per the song's instructions. We sang the song three times due to its popularity, with the final verse sung quickly enough to prompt us all to fall down dizzy at the end.

Story: The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn, from Oceanhouse Media
     This book app shares the story of Chester as his mother helps him overcome his nervousness about going to school. This story has long been a classic for a reason, and I decided to share it this time because preschools will be starting up again soon. I projected the app in its "Read it Myself" mode, which allowed me to go through the app at a pace that suited the children in attendance. I read the story with the help of my own Chester raccoon puppet, whose paw the kids enjoyed kissing after the story. How's that for transmedia storytelling?

Songs: "I'm a Little Teapot" and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider"
     We rolled the song cube to see what song we would sing next as a group. After twice singing "I'm a Little Teapot," the kids asked to roll the song cube again. I of course obliged, and we launched into an enthusiastic rendition of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."

Story: Little Rabbit Foo Foo by Michael Rosen and Arthur Robins
     For the folk/fairytale portion of our story morning, I decided to share this great version of "Little Bunny Foo Foo," a song it appears many children no longer hear from their caregivers. This small book boasts so many fantastic qualities and early literacy opportunities: it's got great vocabulary ("attitude," "goblins"); it reinforces counting; it's got a repetitive style that draws kids into participating and helps them remember the story; it can be sung; and it's got a bit of silliness mixed in with the moral.

Milk and Cookies Time!
     We enjoyed some cinnamon Teddy Grahams and milk immediately after finishing our storytime portion of the morning. Mmm!

Free Play Time
     As with previous implementations of this program, I set out a variety of my library's educational and open-ended children's toys for the free exploration of the children in attendance. The science station was once again a hit, especially the magnets. Also extremely popular were the library's new alphabet machines, which I decided to purchase after reading a great testimonial about the toys in someone else's library (I can't remember on whose blog I read about it; that bookmark got lost in the transition-from-Google-Reader shuffle. [Update: the original post was on Anna's blog. Thanks to reader Amanda who pointed me to the post!]). I saw kids and caregivers identifying letters, naming images, creating patterns--really, these things are quite versatile.

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How have you been incorporating play for preschoolers at your library this summer?

Picnic Lunch @ the Library, including two book lists

This summer, I've been offering a picnic lunch-and-reading program again--this year I opted to call it "Picnic Lunch @ the Library." (See last year's post for full how-to details.) This program tends to draw a smaller crowd; I usually get somewhere between 10 and 20 attendees, including caregivers. The small party of picnickers, however, makes for a relaxing, particularly child-directed program. The kids don't really like one of the stories? Well then, we move along to another.

When I was planning the summer program calendar, I decided to name a theme for the books to be shared at each Picnic Lunch @ the Library. As a result, I got two totally different crowds of kids: children were excited for folk and fairy tales when they came to the Fairy Tales Edition, and the animal lovers chose to attend the Animal Tales Edition. Both groups said they enjoyed the quiet time to listen to a bunch of books read aloud. Oh, and they also like that listening to me read for an hour counts toward their summer reading goals.

Without further ado, my 2013 Picnic Lunch @ the Library book lists:

Fairy Tales

• Princess Furball by Charlotte Huck
• Seven Chinese Brothers by Margaret Mahy
• Snow White and Rose Red Jacob Grimm
• Toads and Diamonds by Charlotte Huck
• The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Andersen

After each story, the children tried to decide what the moral of each tale was; after all, as one child pointed out, fairy tales always teach some sort of lesson.

Animal Tales

• Tarra & Bella by Carol Buckley
• One Cool Friend by Toni Buzzeo
• Unicorn Thinks He's Pretty Great by Bob Shea (the kiddos wanted to include a mythological animal in the mix)
• Two Bobbies by Kirby Larson and Mary Nethery
• Me...Jane by Patrick McDonnell
• Itsy Bitsy & Teeny Weeny by Robbyn Smith van Frankenhuyzen
• Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle

We ended with Flora and the Flamingo, at which point the children wanted to discuss what sorts of music they sometimes hear in their heads when they read different books. I confess I always hear Clair de Lune as I flip through Idle's wordless picture book.

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Do you offer any reading and/or read-aloud programs in conjunction with your summer reading program?