Happy Easter... Cat?

Six eager young children participated in story hour this morning. We began with our usual sticker sign-in and then used our weather cards to post the morning's conditions on our bulletin board. Once again we took a trip up the stairs to see/feel the weather.

 We then moved into our story time [not all children are in the picture as some chose to sit by a parent]. We had a lot of fun listening and predicting as we read from the book, Here Comes the Easter Cat by Deborah Underwood. We also discussed emotions as shown by Cat's face. There were several moments of laughter as the kids made predictions [or gave silly responses to my queries] and we especially laughed when Fletcher said he would like a "hairball" as a gift from Cat!

Notice that we even had bunny ears worn to Story Hour today!

I stopped about two thirds into the book, and that brought about some shocked looks, but I assured the children we would return to the story after we worked on our project. We then started our Easter Bunny bags.

Today's project involved cutting six ovals, and the children were instructed to do some of the cutting on their own before an adult could assist. Surprisingly, most of them did all the cutting with limited help, and I can see progress in that skill. Good job, girls and boy! There was also a choice to be made today of whether to use a glue stick or bottled glue. Most chose the sticks, but a couple worked with bottled glue even though they didn't like it on their fingers. But everyone worked very hard!

We then returned to Here Comes the Easter Cat by Deborah Underwood, and found out that while Cat was very jealous of the Easter Bunny in the beginning things change as the story progresses and Cat becomes a helpful fellow. This book did have a very unusual ending though. Be sure to come to the library and check it out so you can find out all about Cat.

Our final stages of the project involved letting the children use a paper punch to punch out  a few parts for the bag bunny and also drawing on their own whiskers and mouth. As you can see below, Lauren's bunny [and all the others] turned out to be very cute.

Then came the really fun part! The Easter Bunny had left a basket of eggs for us, and the children got to count out the white chips they had earned for participation today and pick an egg out of the basket for each chip... and then a couple extras. [Thank you, Friends of the Library for being such a great Easter Bunny!]  Then I also had purchased several items to add to their bags. As one mom said, "I don't think the Easter Bunny needs to stop at our house this year!".  [I don't think the child agreed!]

Remember next week's theme is baby animals. And please leave a comment on our blog.

Happy Easter!

Children's Librarian,

Mitzi Manthey