Happy Turkey Day!

Since this is the last Storytime before the holiday, today we read about Thanksgiving. We began with The Ugly Pumpkin by Dave Horowitz, a sad and funny story of a pumpkin that no one wants. Then we read A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting, about Mr. Moose trying to find a turkey for dinner so Mrs. Moose can have her Thanksgiving wish. Our last story, Bear Says Thanks by Karma Wilson, tells of our friend Bear, who wants to have a feast and invite all his friends, but who has no food to share. 

We made a turkey for our Thanksgiving craft. Using makers, we colored each ridge on the round edge of a paper plate to make it look like colorful feathers. 

Then we added eyes, a beak, and a wattle to our turkey. We accordion-folded long orange strips to make turkey legs coming from the bottom of the plate.

Finally, we attached our turkey to a long strip of paper. We decorated the paper with colorful Thanksgiving stickers, then wrapped the strip around our heads and taped it. Voila! a turkey hat to wear on Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving Day to you and your family!

Crazy 8s Club: Crayon Craze

Today the Crazy 8s Club used old crayons to sort and classify, estimate and count. We sorted by size and by shade, and grouped crayons into groups of five and then ten. With a partner, we grabbed handfuls of crayons and compared the number in each fist. We counted by 5s and 10s and we even talked about odd and even numbers, oddly enough! As you can see, these crayons were for much more than coloring!

S.T.E.M. Saturday: The Moon and Stars

S.T.E.M. Saturday this month was all about the moon, the stars, and other objects in our solar system. Young patrons made dot-to-dot constellations with stick-on stars and constellation viewers by poking holes in cut paper star formations, then attaching them to the openings of toilet paper tubes. Peek through, and there's the Big Dipper, Casseopia, Orion!

We talked about the planets in our solar system, and checked a NASA image online to see their colors and where they fall in order from our star, the Sun. We made solar system hats (or charts) to take home.

Using a flashlight, a tube, and a ball, we made shadows on the wall to show how the Moon changes its shape from one night to the next. We also checked moon phases for November 2016, talked about the nightly changes we noticed, then tried to duplicate the waxing and waning shapes by scraping the filling from Oreos!

Before we ended, we talked about the library's telescope - yes, we have one that patrons can borrow for up to a week! Stop in or call to find out how!

Friends, Family & Food

We began today's Storytime by reading In November by Cynthia Rylant. I love this book which portrays so beautifully the calm simplicity of this month. It ends, of course, with a big meal with family and friends. We also read Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper, a story of three friends who cook together. Finally, we read How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food by Jane Yolen, a funny book in which dinosaurs eat meals, both rudely and politely.

Next, we decorated plain paper plates to make them fancy, then loaded them up with fake food of all kinds. Paper bag turkey legs, cotton ball mashed potatoes, tiny straw green beans, pompom peas. There were also tissue paper salads, crepe paper gravies, orange foam carrots - and more. What a feast!

With a variety of materials, the menus were endless and creative. This was such a fun craft that our session ran late!

The Little Things

Thanks to seven year old Julia for drawing this wonderful horse for us! We put him with the horse books!

NHS Service Day at Gordon-Nash

Yesterday, six students from New Hampton School, as part of a service project, spent their day at the library helping out with several tasks. First, they investigated different ways of making paper plate dinosaurs, and each made one as a model craft to share with Storytime participants.

When children arrived, the students helped with with Thursday Storytime by reading dinosaur stories and talking with kids about what was happening in the books. Here are the books they each read - 

After that, they helped each young patron make the paper plate dinosaur of their choosing. Students helped as children cut, glued, and created a dinosaur with tissue paper, construction paper, crayons, and brads for movable legs. 

After lunch, NHS Huskies went through the juvenile shelves in the children's room, looking at books and suggesting titles to be removed. Then they moved downstairs and organized discarded children's books for a Book Sale. The room is beautifully organized and it looks great!

Sincere thanks to these fine young people from the New Hampton School. Your help is much appreciated and we hope you will return to the Gordon-Nash again very soon!

New Crazy 8s Club!

Today we begin a new eight week session of Bedtime Math outreach to the New Hampton Community School Afterschool Program. This club is geared to students in kindergarten through second grade and is an opportunity for kids to practice relevant math concepts in a unique and fun way.

In our first session, we practiced addition and subtraction facts as we watched a ninja video, then sneaked through a maze of "laser" (yarn) shapes without touching the red lines, the sides of the triangles and quadrilaterals. We made up secret ninja handshakes, then found the hidden number pattern in the way handshakes were exchanged.

Lots of fun and learning in store for the mathletes in this Crazy 8s Club!