Spring Flowers

At this week's Storytime, we read several books about spring and flowers, then made our own flowers- small ones from cupcake liners and large flowers from coffee filters! Everyone had fun collaging sparkly, puffy, colorful, interesting materials into the center of the flowers and embellishing the petals.  Each flower was so different. It looked like a garden in the Children's Room!

Storytime Saturday: Author Stephen Miller

Author Stephen Miller visited the Gordon-Nash for this month's Storytime Saturday and to read his latest children's book, The Adventures of Fabina and Friends: Wishes Granted. The story is about Fabina, a flamingo princess, and her adopted sister Polly Pig. Fabina is missing her enchanted sunflower and is unable to grant wishes without it. Polly comes to her rescue and learns many valuable lessons along the way. 

After he read, Stephen took questions from the audience about his inspiration and method for writing. He hinted that there may be sequels to this story some day!

While Stephen signed copies of his book for adults, the children made a paper plate sunflower with three foot tall straw stems. They also planted sunflower seeds for their gardens at home, reminders of the story of Fabina.

Thank you for joining us on Storytime Saturday, Stephen Miller!

Spring - Nesting Time!

This week's Storytime was all about Spring, which is finally here! Spring is Here by Will Hillenbrand was about an excited Mole trying to wake Bear from his winter hibernation. And Then It's Spring by Julie Fogliano takes a boy from winter's end to the hopeful planting of a garden. In Bear Wants More by Karma Wilson, can you guess what hungry bear wants more of? And, our last book, Nest by Jorey Hurley, followed a robin family from one Spring to the next. 

For our craft, we collaged brown paper materials, corregated cardboard, and yarn into a pouched paper plate "nest", then made cute and crazy feathered birds and chicks to slide inside!

Inspired by these creations, I grabbed one of my favorite books from the shelf and read The Perfect Nest by Catherine Friend, the hysterical story of Jack the Cat, who builds a nest so he can have an omelet. Sacre bleu! The audience loved this funny book!

All Kinds of Eggs

What's in an egg? A chicken...and all kinds of other critters! Today we read several books about eggs, including An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Hutts Aston. This book showed us all sorts of different types of eggs - bird, reptile, amphibian, insect, fish - and the beautiful shapes and colors they can be. We read several books about birds' eggs and also read Mr. Seahorse by Eric Carle, in which Mrs. Seahorse gives her eggs to her mate to carry until they hatch out. On the computer, we looked at photographs of all kinds of eggs! Who knew there were so many?

At craft time, we decorated a paper egg any way we wanted to, then cut it in half and hinged it with a brad. We taped a baby creature inside that showed when the egg was opened. Someone even made a baby dinosaur!