Happy Birthday Sesame Street!

On Thursday, November 10th we celebrated Sesame Street's 42nd birthday at the library!

Linda and I put together a program for children ages 1 and up that included the big book Elmo Loves You, playing instruments to some of our favorite Sesame Street tunes, a scavenger hunt to find some of our friends from Sesame Street that were hidden around the Children's Room, and an unforgettable Elmo craft.

Check out the pictures below to see what a great time everyone had!

Argghhh!

We have these two treasure chests at the library. I have no idea why we have them but I figured we should make use of them- what better way than to do a pirate program!

The two treasure chests had these toy gold coins in them. So I figured that while I was reading some stories, my teen volunteers could hide the coins and then all of our little pirates could go on a treasure hunt and bring all of the gold back to the treasure chests.

The children also made pirate hats, and I made them a sword out of a balloon! Prior to the program, I also purchased some eye patches and temporary tattoos from Oriental Trading for the kids to really look like pirates! And of course...I dressed up like a pirate too, but I think I looked more like a biker or a gypsy:-)

Dino Fun!

Everyone who works with children in a library know that one of the most popular questions you will be asked is "Where are the dinosaur books?" It's really easy to turn this interest into a great program for preschoolers.

A few years ago, my friend Donna gave her daughter a dinosaur themed birthday party. One of the activities the kids did, was to put on dinosaur feet and do an egg race (not a real egg!) To make the dinosaur feet, she used cereal boxes with big feet cut out from posterboard. This month's Family Fun has the same idea, but uses tissue boxes.  So I snagged the idea and had the kids walk like the dinosaurs once did. A suggestion if you are going to try this in your library- do not have children try and walk around in these dinosaur feet on carpeted floor- they will only slide. It is best to do this activity on concrete or tiled floor.

Another aspect of the program was to have children go on a dinosaur egg hunt. After Easter last year, I bought a whole bunch of those plastic eggs on clearance. I also bought some plastic dinosaurs at our local dollar store. I stuffed a dinosaur in each egg, and then made a batch of playdoh to cover the eggs. OK- I didn't do the stuffing and covering- that's what teen volunteers are for! Of course, this required some prep, so we did this the week before the program.

 The day of the program, we read some stories, walked in our dinosaur feet, and went on the egg hunt. Each child could then crack open their egg to find a dinosaur to take home. They each then made a dinosaur puppet (on a craft stick!) to take home.

Playdoh Chefs

Another program Allyson piloted in 2009 was the Playdoh Chefs program. Our library space doesn't really allow us to do baking or cooking programs, which is hard to do these days with all of the food allergies out there. But playdoh is one way we can 'bake' at the library and we now do this as a regular program several times a year.

Allyson tried at her recipe at home ahead of time. Meanwhile, Linda decided that should could make chef hats for all of the children that were attending the program (2 sessions, 15 children each.) She made the hats out of sheets of crepe paper and cardstock.

I also ordered these cute little aprons that also serve well as smocks. The children looked absolutely adorable as chefs!

As I mentioned, we now host the program several times during the year. The chef hats were cute but very time consuming to make so we no longer make them for the children. We usually set the tables up in a "U" shape with the librarian in the middle. There are five ingredients for playdoh, so we put five children at each table so they each have a chance to add an ingredient and mix! The librarian running the program also makes a batch to show the children which ingredients go in the batch at which time. It also gives the kids a little bit more dough to play with. There's also an extra batch in case for some reason one was a dud. Allyson comes up with many wonderful programs, and this is definitely one of my favorites!

Here is the recipe if you'd like to make playdoh @ your library or...@ home!

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

1 tbsp oil

1 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 cup warm water and food coloring (put food coloring in same container as the water)

Mix all ingredients in large bowl. Knead with hands. Add more flour if sticky, add more water if crumbly.Keep refrigerated in ziploc bag when not in use!

Legos!

If you're attending this year's Summer Reading Workshops, you'll most likely stop by my table during our round robin sessions. Lego's are great to tie into programming for this year's Summer Reading theme: One World, Many Stories.  You may be asking what legos have to do with 'One World, Many Stories." Well boys and girls, Legos were invented in Denmark.

In 2009, one of my staff members, Allyson, got crafty and decided to have our preschoolers paint with legos. You can pretty much paint with anything, but painting with legos is pretty cool.  Since MAPL is on Main Street which is very walkable, our director at the time really like hanging things crafted by children in the front window of the library for all to see. We rolled out the large roll of white bulletin board paper and had the kids paint on that, then hung those creations throughout the library.

They also painted a smaller work of art to take home.

This summer we're going to do the program again, but we'll add a surprise at the end with a lego pinata. I found this pinata in the Family Fun magazine. It's a shirt box that's painted. You can cut down paper towel rolls or toilet paper rolls and use them as the connectors. The best part is that there is no trying to shove a bunch of stuff into a little hole of a pinata. Open up the shirt box- put all of your goodies inside, and then hot glue the box shut. Based on past experiences with pinatas, I think I'll be adding some strings to the bottom for the children to take turns pulling since that usually lessens the chance of the children accidentally whacking each other when trying to whack the pinata.

Other libraries are now offering a regular lego program for school aged children. Most libraries provide the legos so that everybody has the same amount, and then give them a challenge. For example, during one session they might build a castle and at another they might build a ship. While donations might seem like a great way to go, I've been hearing from a lot of librarians out there that legos are very difficult for people to give up. It might be worth it to just shell out the money and buy a few sets for the library to use.

Fancy Nancy

Little girls love dressing up and what better way to do it at the library than to be Fancy Nancy! We hosted this program twice at our library  in the summer of 2009 for 15 children each and both filled. And while it was clearly a program aimed at drawing in little girls, we did have a few little boys as well. Every child was encouraged to dress "fancy" for the program. We read a few Fancy Nancy stories, then paraded around the library to show just how fancy we were. We were able to purchase tiaras at the dollar store for any child that wanted one. In addition, we also had what I call "Michael Jackson" styled hats in the craft closet that we gave to the little boys to wear. Following our parade, we then created our own accessories- since accessories are a very important part of your outfit, at least according to Fancy Nancy! The girls decorated fans made out of cardstock that were pre-folded and tied at the bottom with a pretty ribbon while the little boys decorated their very own bowtie. Decorations included sequins, jewel colored rhinestones, and foam shapes.

Librarians are superheroes, too!

One program idea that I took away from the Statewide Summer Reading Workshops in 2009 was to have a superhero program for preschool aged children. We read a couple stories about some not so well-known superheroes (like Adventure Annie!) and then made our own cape out of a plastic tablecloth and yarn, along with a mask to match. We then paraded our superhero costumes around the library so that all of the patrons knew they were safe! Check out the fierce Allison below!

My part-time Children's Librarian, Linda, took things one step further and actually made me a Super Librarian costume for the program. While I clearly don't resemble the prototype of the original Super Librarian, I don't mind stepping into the costume at all:-)