Books for Belknap House

Students from the New Hampton Community School's After-School Program visited the Gordon Nash and chose to listen to a reading of Ned's New Home by Kevin Tseng. After a brief discussion about homes, we all ventured downstairs to choose good used books to donate to Belknap House, our county's new homeless shelter in Laconia.

Students read through books, then labelled each choice with a post-it note explaining why they thought families might like the book. We hope children and their families will enjoy reading the books we've selected!

Scarecrows for Fall

At today's Storytime, we read books with scarecrows in them, and then we made one of our own. Our puppet scarecrows were made from paper bags, and then given yellow hats that were decorated with drawings. Paper, crepe paper, and yarn embellishments finished the scarecrows. It was no surprise that many of the scarecrows could talk in funny little scarecrow voices! 

Trucks!

For a craft at today's Storytime, we made trucks from rectangles, squares and circles. Each truck was different!

Of course, the stories we read were all about trucks. We read Go, Little Green Truck by Roni Schotter, about a small green pick-up that gets forgotten until it's time to go to the farmer's market. The Mixed-up Truck, in the book by Stephen Savage, was a cement mixer that mixed up all sorts of odd white things. Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle was a story about kindness, helpfulness, and the power of friendship. 

STEM Saturday: Magnetic Fun!

Kids dropped in to our first STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) Saturday of this school year to experiment with magnets and to play with magnetic toys.

We had Magformers that are on loan to our library for the month of September. These building shapes have powerful magnets that hold the structures and cars together. 

 

We had a jingle bell game where you had to pick up only one color of bell using a two-sided magnetic wand. It was pretty tricky, but fun.

We had horseshoe magnets, circle magnets, bar magnets, and even a star magnet! There was a fun game with magnetic shapes and another one with magnetic objects to make a scene, like a birthday party and a cake with candles!

With all the magnets, we noticed the invisible force! Some magnets had stronger force than others. 

We even played with magnetic putty. Long strings of the putty would dance over the magnets as the force pushed and pulled the magnetic clay. When a ball of putty was placed next to the powerful magnet, it would move in towards it. What force!

It's lots of fun to experiment with magnetism! We will have Magformers until the end of the month! Stop in and play!

All About Colors

In September when school is back in session (including kindergarten and preschool!), our Storytime population often shifts a little as we make room for younger children. Today we read about colors and had fun gluing and making a beautiful sun catcher.

We read Pete the Cat:  I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin. In this funny story, Pete keeps stepping in different places and his new white shoes turn all kinds of predictable colors. Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh and White Rabbit's Color Book by Alan Baker both showed what happens when the primary colors - red, blue, and yellow - get mixed! In Little Green Peas by Keith Baker, the green peas experience all sorts of colors in their world. 

The base of our suncatcher was a paper plate with a cut-out center. Contact paper was attached to the back with the sticky side up, so children could easily stick on colorful circles and squares of tissue paper. When the suncatchers were finished, we held them up to the window to see how the overlapped pieces made new colors!