Circles and Round Things

We began our morning by signing in with a sticker on our evergreen tree [after playtime, of course]. Then we went out side to see what today's weather was like. It was mostly cloudy, but the sun was working hard to shine through. When we came back in we went through our weather plates and chose the proper one to represent today's weather.

Then we reviewed our theme of stars from last week and sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and took a last look at the stars on the ceiling.

Next we moved right into the reading of our first book If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff . Two of the children knew the book quite well and could tell what was going to happen next.

 Everyone enjoyed the story, even though we thought the pig was messy and didn't use good manners all the time. When we came to the part where the pig decides to dance we stopped and used our Action Box so we could do some movement as well.

After we finished reading the book we talked about the shape of a pancake. The children all knew it was a circle so I showed them the circle drawn on the chalkboard and the word "circle" inside it. We then went to the craft table to do some circle paintings by dipping styrofoam cups into a thin puddle of paint on a paper plate.

Didn't these turn out cute? And don't you like our "smiling" faces as we posed with our artwork?

Then we sat back down to talk about "round". First I had a squishy ball to demonstrate round and we talked about how it's different from a circle which is flat. The children were able to name many things that is round and then we looked through half of the book, Round is a Pancake by Joan Sullivan Baranski, and found lots more items in the pictures that were round or circular than what the story mentioned. If the children want to read all of that book they will need to check it out at the library as we stopped in the middle and went to the craft table to make a paper plate circle collage.

The collages were made by following directions. I had a bag with red, blue and yellow circles in it and lots of punched circles of these colors in different sizes spread on the table. I also had punched out different patterned circles and had them on the end of the table. If I drew a colored circle out of my bag the children had to chose one of that color in the size of their choice and glue it onto their plate. If I drew out a white circle they could go to the end of the table and chose a patterned circle and glue it on.

The plates soon became full enough that the circles had to overlap. The collages turned out very cute also and will make some nice wall art at home.

We ended our morning by eating some "round treats" [donut holes], taking home our artwork, and a couple "homework" sheets: one to trace circles and color them in red on a tree and the other to cut out circles and make a teddy bear head.

The children were very cooperative and worked hard as usual.

Next week we will have a monkey theme for Story Hour. On Thursday, November 6th Story Hour will be cancelled so Mitzi may attend the Wisconsin Library Association's annual conference to learn some new things!

Stars and Songs

This morning only two children and their moms were able to attend our session, but we had a good time together. After playtime we started the morning by learning about weather. Mitzi showed us some paper plates with drawings of weather symbols for thunderstorms, bright sunshine, and partly cloudy/sunny. Then we headed outside to see what the weather was like and the bright sun nearly blinded us!  We did notice some clouds lower in the sky, but they were not near the sun. Inside we chose the "sunny" plate for our weather today.

We talked about the star on the board and the word "star" below it that starts with the letter "s". Then over to the craft table to apply paint to our star wand. As the children finished painting Mitzi sprinkled some "magic stardust" onto the stars to make them sparkle. Then we counted the points on two different stars and found out they each had five points.

It was time for some movement and we again used our Action Box and moved to dance, hop, crawl, bend and jump!

It was then time to sit down and read our only book for today: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star illustrated by Annie Kubler.We sang the song first and then found that the book showed us stars shining on different people and animals all over the world. The kids could identify many of the animals in the book, and we learned a few new ones. When we finished we sang the rhyme again. Then back to the table to paint the other side of our star wand and get some "magic dust" on it.

After this we looked up at the ceiling where there was a cluster of stars and learned a new song about twinkling stars that we sang to the tune of "London Bridge is Falling Down" and waved our magic star wands as we sang.  When we seemed to know the song fairly well we went into the hallway with our mom and when we came back in and sat down Mitzi turned out the lights and the stars on the ceiling glowed. We sang our two songs to the stars.

Our final activities were to make a starry sky by placing a paper over stars that were taped to the table and doing a crayon rubbing. We also got out a treasure chest and found red, yellow and blue stars inside. We practiced sorting these by color and into piles of large, medium and small. Both children did a great job with these two activities.

Our morning ended with us eating stars! Mitzi cut these out of cheese for us and had some crackers to go with them if we chose. We also got to take home our wands, star rubbings and a star printout with our second song printed on it

Today's lesson further developed the skills from last week and added categorizing small, medium and large as well as colors.

Time to Share!

After the usual playtime and putting away the toys we began our morning around the theme of sharing. We sat down and read the first story in the book Dot and Dash Learn to Share by Emma Dodd.

As the characters are all animals, some of the children found it funny that they could pick up toys and play with them, especially the giraffe. We talked about how we feel when others won't share with us.

The children were exceptionally wiggly this morning, so I got out my "movement box" and we tossed the box and then did whatever movement was stated by the word on top. Each child had a turn tossing the box [sometimes more than once if the same word kept coming up] and everyone joined in moving to the word. It brought out some giggles, lots of movement, and we were more ready to sit when Story Hour continued.

It was now time to read our second book, Llama Llama Time to Share by Anna Dewdney.

 In this story a llama and a gnu fight over a doll and tear off the arm. We stopped where the mother llama sewed on the arm and gave the kids, and the doll, a time out.

At this point we looked at the book Happy by Mies Van Hout which has pictures of fish expressing emotions. This was a challenge for the children. They mostly seemed to know "happy, sad and mad". We worked on a few others by giving hints to what the feeling should be, but it was still a struggle. We will continue to work on emotions in other sessions.

Next it was over to the craft table where I gave the children a sheet that said, "When no one will share with me I feel ____________."  The children then drew, or just colored the way they felt when that happened and we filled in the blank with the word they told us. Again, that familiar feeling, mad, was most often used.

I then talked about how sharing sometimes means sharing space and we played a game called "Sharks in the Water" where the children had to swim around an island until the music stopped and then quickly get on the island before the sharks got them. Each time the island got a bit smaller and we had to crowd together to allow everyone to share the space. Some of the moms even played sharks out to get us if we didn't get on the island!

Back to the carpet! We sat down and finished our llama story. We were happy to know that Nelly Gnu and Llama Llama figured out a way to cooperate and ended the day by sharing, becoming friends, and looking forward to playing together again some day.

I ended the morning by pairing up the students and giving each a sealed brown bag. They were then told that when they opened the bag they would need to share whatever they had that was different with their partner. Although some had to be assisted in seeing the differences, all did a very fine job of sharing the items and they were then able to eat the things they shared or they could take them home.

Some of the skills that were being developed in today's lessons were: Large muscle movement, sharing, recognizing feelings, cooperation, listening, following directions, and predicting.

Next week's lesson will be based around stars and the book/song, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Children's Librarian,
Mitzi Manthey

Strawberries for Everyone!

The first Story Hour session was held this morning, September 25, beginning at 9:30 a.m. with some children arriving at 9:15 to enjoy playtime. We began the morning by talking about the colors and parts of the strawberry that was drawn on the chalkboard. We then went to the craft table to paint our strawberries.

As soon as we finished painting we gathered to read, The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood. 

Each of the children had a little mouse finger puppet to help act out the story. We discussed feelings as shown by the mouse's facial expressions and predicted the story as we went along. 

I stopped reading at a suspense-filled part and we went back to the table. First we passed around a real strawberry and noted the stem and where the seeds were located.

 Next we glued seeds and a stem on our strawberries.

Then we returned to the story spot and looked at a strawberry plant that was given to us from Price's Produce Farm. We noted the runner and the roots of the new plant; someone even noticed the leaves had a scent that seemed similar to a strawberry. Each child was given a real strawberry leaf to take home.

We then returned to our book to find out how the story ended. The children were very pleased with the ending because, as in the book, we then got to go to the table and eat a strawberry.

We talked about other fruit: an orange, a kiwi, a pear and a peach. We discussed where their seeds are located, their color and then tasted each one. Before pealing the kiwi the children were able to feel its "fuzzy" covering. They found that quite unusual.

At that point Story Hour was over, but some of the children chose to stay and play while I cleaned up the room. Our theme for next week will be sharing.

Fall Story Hour is coming!!

If you are interested in the fall story hour send us an email at pardeevillestoryhour@gmail.com and let us know what days/times you will be able to make story hour.  When we have responses we will see if we can figure out a time that works for everyone!

Also, if there is interest in a toddler or baby story hour let us know and we will see about setting those up.

We hope to see you soon!  We are thinking of starting in mid-September or early October!

Summer Library Program!

Hi everyone,

I just wanted you all to know that the summer library programming will be in July.  All summer long we have Reading Bingo!  You pick up a bingo card from the front desk, fill it up, and be entered to win the prizes.  Prizes will change every month!  Adults can play too!  Be sure to come in and register early for the programming as some events have limited seating.  Hope to see you!

Cassandra

Colors, Rainbows, and... Fish?

Today in story hour we had eight children show up.  This was the only the second story hour I have ever done (I filled in for Mitzi today).  We played for the 15 minutes and put a rainbow sticker on our name tags.  The kids got to keep their Rainbow Fish name tags today!

After we got our stickers we talked about the weather.  The kids decided it was spring, after some hinting that it wasn't summer yet.  They said it was chilly, but not cold, and that it was cloudy outside.  Our picture of a cloudy day shows that the sun is peaking behind the clouds.  One of the children pointed out to me that the sun wasn't out but we had no other picture.

After the weather we sat down with our Rainbow Fish because the first book we read was

The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister

The story was about Rainbow Fish, the most beautiful fish in the ocean because he had all kinds of purple, green, blue, and shiny silver scales.  The other fish admired him until he refused to share his scales!  Rainbow Fish couldn't understand why no one liked him anymore.  He got advice to give all the fish a scale.  This would make them happy and make Rainbow Fish happy.  Rainbow Fish gave the other fish a scale, they were happy, Rainbow Fish was happy, and they all went off to play together.  Sharing is important!

After reading about Rainbow Fish we did a project.  The kids got to make rainbows!  We did this by having half circles of every color.  The kids had to pick out which color was the biggest.  After that color was gone they picked the biggest color out of the remaining half circles left.  The colors were glued on top of each other to make a rainbow.

After we made our rainbows we read

Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh

This story was about three mice who got into jars of paint!  One mouse was red, one yellow, and one was blue.  The mice climbed out of the jars and the paint dripped off of them into puddles!  The red mouse started stepping and dancing in the yellow puddle making the puddle orange!  The yellow mouse stepped in the blue puddle to make green.  And the blue mouse stepped into the red puddle to make purple!  The kids seemed to have fun trying to guess what colors they would make.  The mice washed up, painted the walls, but left a white wall so the cat could not see them.

After reading Mouse Paint we played with foam!!  We had red (which was actually kind of pink), blue, and yellow foam.  We got out little bowls so the children could make their own mouse paint colors.  First we did red and yellow to make orange, then yellow and blue to make green, and lastly blue and red to make purple!  

One of the children said we needed to do one more so we put ALL the colors together.  They made all of the colors after a little bit of stirring but after more stirring turned a green color.  The bucket provided for washing up after quickly turned to bubbles as the foam was just mixed up soap.  The kids seemed to have a hard time trying to get their hands free of soap!

After the foam we said our goodbyes.  This was the last story hour of the spring and the children received goody bags with candy, toys, bubbles, and a book!

We hope you enjoyed story hour and we can't wait to see you all in the fall!  We will let you know about the summer library programming also!  We have a family movie night coming on the 16th!  It's Walking with the Dinosaurs!  Be sure to bring the little ones for a show!