Story Time: Monsters!

The problem with a monster-themed story time is choosing the books - so many fantastic choices out there! I ended up using slightly different titles both days, but they included the following:

9780307010858

$4.99

A classic you just can't go wrong with. It was funny how many kids - and their grown-ups - perked up immediately and shouted, "I have that book!"

9780688168667

$16.99

Our whole sub-theme was that monsters aren't anything to be scared of, and you can't be scared of these two! Monday's crowd was very obliging with the "Ews" on things like bug-filled cookies, while I asked in mock surprise, "You mean your Mommy doesn't make you those?"

9781596432543

Out of print, but always a crowd pleaser.

9780805095098

$14.99

Just plain silly, with another you-weren't-scared-were-you ending.

To get some wiggles out, we stood up and sang "If You're a Monster and You Know It". I've used the Emberly book before, but it can be a bit cumbersome, so this time we just sang the song and I let the kids come up with verses (Clack your teeth, rattle your spines, etc.) Unfortunately, the "give a roar" at the end was a little too effective, and we had one tiny tot in tears Monday! Way to go, Miss Ami, terrorize the children!

Both days, we ended with:

9781419717314

$14.95

This is perfect for a flannel board, but I ran out of time, so I just duplicated the pieces at 200% on the copier. I had the kids reach out and 'tickle' the different parts of the monster while I moved them to their new places. One Mommy, during craft time, mentioned that they were always on the lookout for ways to keep the monsters and bad guys away, so we discussed things like monster spray as well. I told the young man in question that my husband is a former police officer, and that he swears by it. He seemed impressed. (P.S. Mike - if anyone asks, it's the pink sparkly spray that works best.)

For our craft, we made monsters (and learned about reflecting images and color mixing, but don't tell them that). My kids will spend hours doing these - and, truth be told, many of the adults had to make their own! As examples, of course.

Just fold a piece of paper in half, dribble paint on one side, then re-fold and smoosh. When you open it again, turn it in different directions until you see your monster.

I made the top right one in front of the kids as an example, and they immediately decided it was twin snakes. As soon as they said it, that was all I could see!

Add eyes, feathers, arms, antennae, whatever. Too much fun. And we snuck some STEM in!

Coming Friday: a recap of tomorrow night's Family Fright Night. If you are local, we hope to see you here at 6PM!

Review: Busy Wheels series by Mandy Archer and Martha Lightfoot

9781682970416

Each $8.95 (PB)

9781682970447

9781682970454

9781682970423

9781682970430

It's time to get busy with machines that roar, whizz, vroom, and zoom! The stories feature a popular vehicle as the central character, and involve a group of animal characters in a supporting role. A detailed spread on different parts of the vehicle will help children understand what makes up the machines and will help familiarize them with vehicle vocabulary.

Each of my review copies is marked "UK Edition", so there may be a few differences if purchased in the US. I noticed "driving seat" where we would say "driver's seat", and "stabiliser" vs. "stabilizer", but nothing that would really confuse a young child fascinated with vehicles - and that pretty much means all of them!

If nothing else, the differences are a great way to build vocabulary beyond that intended. You can even get into figures of speech, and how they can differ from country to country, or even region to region. I kind of prefer them with the British terminology and spelling, myself, for just that reason. 

Each vehicle goes through its normal tasks - building a playground, fighting a fire - and then some find another adventure, such as rescuing a kitten from a tree, or a climber on a mountainside. The animal characters work well for the younger audience, although it seemed odd to have a dog herding cows into the barn via tractor, rather than barking at them! The stories, fonts, illustrations, and design are all sure to please young readers who just can't get enough of anything with wheels.

The review copies I have are paperback, and I have the feeling they will literally be read to pieces if I try to put them in our collection, so they will reappear later as summer reading prizes. Hard covers are available, however, and you can order them directly from the publisher at this link. Other vehicles featured include Police Car, Ambulance, Dump(er) Truck, Plane, Train, School Bus, and Space Shuttle (not all available in the US yet).

If You Give a Librarian a Barbie...

...she probably won't leave it alone. Because librarians can't leave anything alone. And when you add teens into the mix...

Our plan for this month's Teen Cafe was a sort of "Frankentoys" program, where we would take pieces of old toys and put them together in bizarre but creative ways. Remember the rotten neighbor kid in Toy Story? We solicited broken toys, but all we received were old Barbies, so - we switched it over to a Zombie Barbie program!

Preparation is pretty cheap and easy, once you have a collection of dolls and clothing. I mixed up some brown goop to soak the clothes in (coffee, coffee grounds, and cocoa mix. Everyone now smells like mocha lattes, yum!)

The coffee grounds added a nice, gritty texture, especially when it got smeared in the hair.

I spent $3.80 on a spray can of grey primer, and gave the dolls the opposite of a spray-on tan.

It only took a few minutes to dry out in the sun, and I gathered the other materials between sides, so I was ready to go in less than half an hour.

There were no instructions from there, just experimenting. I used wadded paper and white paint to sort of soften the plain grey, then spattered some red all over.

I had whited out the eyes, and later added a single black dot. When I was spattering blood it covered one eye, which I didn't want, but when I tried to wipe it off it made a nice garish smear, so it was all good.

Add some blood to the clothing, still drying from the goop:

And here we have our lovely ladies - one who didn't quite make it home from Prom, and one who got up in her jammies to see what that noise was outside...

I didn't have permission to photograph the teens, but they had their own techniques:

Spattered blood being the predominate theme. Clothing was deemed extraneous.

A fun and easy project - not for everyone, but perfect for your teens who want an art project they probably won't get to do at school!

Toddler STEM - Pumpkin Fun!

This month's theme was pumpkins, and we had so many ideas we couldn't get to them all! 

I always start everyone off outside the room with basic instructions: 1) let the kids explore, 2) ingredients and suggestions are listed at each station, and 3) I will be putting the gate up at the door to slow kids down so they can be dusted off before hitting the carpet.

Right inside the door I have a few flyers about preschool STEM, as well as for any upcoming events.

But most of the room is centers:

Squish Bags

Squish the pieces around to make a face!

Hair gel with yellow food coloring and felt pieces

Colored rice with poster board pieces

We had two of each type, with wide clear tape sealing them closed. They held up to two days of exuberant babies squeezing them hard, and determined toddlers tossing them like bean bags. 

Motor skills, problem solving, textures.

Cornmeal Construction

This was the one the most parents said they are going to do at home. Just two bags of corn meal, a truck, a couple shovels, a magnifying glass, and some sieves.



Buried, of course, so the first kids got to discover them!

That littlest cutie would have stayed there all morning, I think. Mommy is probably still getting it out of her shoes, but she was so cute, sticking her hands in and then smiling at everybody! Of course it ended up everywhere, but wasn't as slick as the cloud dough last month. 

Sensory exploration, cause and effect.

Pumpkin Paint

While cruising the aisles of the dollar store, I saw the orange poofs and decided we had to do something with them.

Another very popular activity!

Note wet wipes for clean-up! I also had the whole table situated next to the sink, with a stool and washcloths ready, and old t-shirts for everyone to put on over their clothes. There was an empty table to place masterpieces on to dry. 

I started off with just a squirt or red, orange, yellow and white on paper plates, and added a bit more partway through. Of course, a half hour in they were all pretty much orange. Having a finite amount of paper allowed me to declare the paint done about ten minutes before we ended the whole program, which helped a lot with clean-up!

Cause and effect, color mixing.

Play Clay

There were three big chunks, which of course were divided into smaller chunks as kids dug in. I left the cinnamon out so they could work more in, and MAN did the room smell good! At the last minute I nixed the food coloring, because I realized it would come off of hands, but perhaps not the table...

Daddies enjoyed playing, too.

Her expression needs a caption!

These two really liked the cinnamon.

Motor skills, cause and effect, sensory exploration, engineering.

Pumpkin Possibilities

I put the signs up with suggested activities, but I am happier when they come up with their own ways to explore. This quickly became a tossing game, from different angles and distances.

The tape was to give them a straight line to try to roll them on, but it was mostly ignored. That's okay!

Another young man did some sorting, which led to discussions of which ones were the same - by color? By size? By shape? So many ways to sort!

Physics, motor skills, cause and effect, math.

Pumpkin Patterns





The original idea was to poke them into regular pumpkins, but even I had a hard time with that. These styrofoam pumpkins from the dollar store were perfect.



More thinking outside the box:



As long as they aren't being destructive, I encourage that. Now, if they had been poking them into the WALLS...

Math, engineering, motor skills, cause and effect.

Last, but certainly not least,

Pumpkin Guts





I am really horrible at 'shooting' pumpkin seeds, btw. Once I managed to land one in my own hair - still not sure how I managed that. I also bounced them off several kids. One little girl tried once and told me she couldn't do it, and I told her she couldn't do it yet. Bless her heart, she kept trying until she got it! Good for her!

Sensory exploration, cause and effect, using tools, fine motor.

I counted 57 people around the midpoint Monday, and 56 on Wednesday, which is just about the right number for our little room.

And no injuries! That's a good measure of success for any program!

Review: Floodwaters and Flames, the 1913 Disaster in Dayton, Ohio, by Lois Miner Huey

9781467794329

$33.32

March 25, 1913, began as a typical day in Dayton, Ohio. Downtown bustled with streetcars, carriages, and automobiles. By 8:10 a rush of water from the Great Miami River flooded the city. Desperate people climbed trees and telephone poles to escape the torrent. For days, people were stranded, cut off from the outside world. Experience the Great Dayton Flood through the eyes of those who lived it. Today the storm that caused the flood and devastated Dayton and communities across the country is largely forgotten. But the residents of Dayton resolved never to suffer such a disaster again. Their heroic response became a model for how we prepare for and recover from natural disasters.

I asked for a copy of this book because I grew up in Ohio, and spent time in the Dayton area through college. It is a timely book in general, however, with all the news reports of flooding throughout the country.

History is a story, and I love it best when it is presented that way. It was actually my worst subject in school, because I could never keep all those battles and dates straight on their boring old lists. When one of my college professors finally introduced me to historical fiction, however, it was like the skies cleared and everything clicked into place. 

Floodwaters and Flames starts out in fine story form: "Coal dealer Andrew Fox looked out his window on the night of Monday, March 24. He could hear the wind howl, as it had for days." From there the reader is swept along (pun intended) as the story of this disaster is told from the viewpoints of several citizens, both the famous (the Wright family) and the not-so-much. Happy-making for the visual learners, a map towards the beginning shows the location of each person at the beginning of the story. Little imagination is needed, however, to picture each scene unfolding with descriptions like this:

"Perhaps the queerest sight of all was a table we saw floating by us. It was set for dinner. Plates were laid for four, and in the center was a catsup bottle and a sugar bowl, with a menu card between."

It was really fascinating to read about the rescue efforts made, from the cash register company owner ordering his staff to bake bread and build boats instead of their regular jobs, to the librarian struggling to save the children's books. My shoulders stayed tense throughout this very fast-paced narrative, and I caught myself holding my breath many times.

Of course, not everyone was rescued. Many froze to death the first night, and those who survived to morning were faced with fire and explosions. Can you imagine being surrounded by water, and in danger of burning? More than seventy thousand people trapped in buildings or worse, up in trees or telephone poles. I can't fathom.

All things end, however, and the narrative turns to the clean-up and recovery. It is always heartening in a disaster to see people work together. We have seen it all over the country, and here in our little town this past month. 

Disasters can also mean a change in policy or procedure. Before the flooding, local communities were expected to handle their own disaster relief, but in this instance Ohio's governor reached out to the Federal government, setting in motion actions that led eventually to the formation of FEMA. Relief was also offered by a small (then) group known as The Red Cross. There was also a group called The Community Chest...now known as The United Way. Flood control was rethought and re-engineered. But, of course, flooding and other disasters still happen.

I can see this book read aloud in class, or devoured by an individual child. While the title is eye-catching, I am concerned the sepia tones of the cover photo are not, so I may have to hand sell this to a few patrons. I don't think they will be dissatisfied once they sit down with it, though!

Review: Chicken in Space by Adam Lehrhaupt and Shahar Kober

9780062364128

$17.99

Zoey isn’t like the other chickens. She has dreams. She has plans. And she has a best friend, Sam the pig, who will join her on her wild adventures . . . if he gets to eat some pie along the way. How will Zoey and Sam get from the barn to the stars? Will Zoey be the first chicken in space? Will Sam get a snack? One thing is certain: Zoey always finds a way.

These sound like my kind of friends - adventure and food? Count me in! I love Zoey's optimistic attitude - "Not a problem! An opportunity!" I also admired Sam's ability to stay focused on one main priority (Zoey: "Space is beautiful." Sam: "So is pie. See any pie?") while still being supportive of his friend. Zoey, in turn, shows that she has not taken Sam for granted, nor has she ignored his needs. A fun read for story time, with illustrations children are sure to enjoy.

And, there's pie!

Story Time: It's Absurd!

No, I don't mean that story time is absurd...well... it can be...but, in this case what I mean is that our theme for the week was things that are odd/silly/strange. Bonus, new vocabulary for most kids!

Narrowing down the story choices for this was hard! I had to start with one of everyone's favorites from last year, though:


9780803741713
$17.99

Guaranteed to rile up any group of kids! I had planned to settle them back down (somewhat) with a round of "Tooty-ta", but I forgot both days! If you aren't familiar with this early literacy staple, do a quick search and you'll come up with a dozen videos. Next up:


9781416955665
$16.99

I like to pull this one out for the smarty-pants who need to yell out their answers before everyone else. Older kids enjoy it as well, so it's one of my classroom visit staples.

Two big books to round us out (ISBNs and prices below are for regular HC picture books)


9780152744281

$17.99

An oldie but goody!


9780547074214
$16.00

A definite tongue twister, you will want to practice this ahead of time! We didn't get to it on the second day, because the littles were ready to get up and move (which is when I should have broken out Tooty-ta. Librarian fail.)

For our craft, I wanted to try some pasta/pipe cleaner sculptures I saw all over Pinterest. Those used boards with holes carefully drilled in them as their bases, however, and I wasn't about to do that for 40-50 kids. Surveying the craft supplies packed through my work room, my eyes lit on the pool noodle slices we used for last month's Totally Untidy Toddlers. Perfect! 

Each child got one noodle slice and two pipe cleaners to start off with (they could branch out if they wanted to), and I put out bowls of colored pasta and cut up straws. Monday we had a very small group (most parents probably assumed we were closed), so they got to add on more noodle rings and pipe cleaners to take their sculptures a bit farther.