2023 Summer Reading Program: All Together Now

Summer Reading Program: Thank You to our Presenters

A big thank you to all the folks and groups who helped make this year's Summer Reading Program a success. Thanks for your patience with weather-related issues, rescheduled vacations, and last minute decisions. You made everything work!!

The Joyful Noise Ukulele Band

The Squam Lakes Science Center

Gretchen Draper, Writer & Consultant

Jerry Schneider, the Butterfly Guy

Lindsay and Her Puppet Pals

Karel Hayes, Author & Illustrator

All our wonderful Touch-a-Truck Presenters (see last post)

The Maple Creamery 

The New Hampton School

Summer Reading Program 2023: Touch a Truck!

The rain held off and we had a successful Touch-a-Truck event last night at the Gordon-Nash for our first Summer Reading Program family event. 

Kids visited each vehicle to hear from the driver about how his or her work helps our community. The town's grader and the NHDOT trucks help to keep roadways safe for cars and people. After the Waste Management truck collects trash from the big green WM bins, some of it gets turned into electricity! The police cruiser and the fire truck help with safety in our town. When the fish raised at the fish hatchery have grown, the hatchery truck delivers them to New Hampshire rivers and lakes and lets them free. The tow truck had a big flat bed on the back - long enough to move a disabled car or small truck to a garage for repair. And other big vehicles help with building or repair projects in our community.

Thanks to the following businesses for their vehicles, for their knowledgeable and patient drivers and owners, and for the small gifts to help kids remember this special event.

New Hampton Public Works Department

New Hampton Fire Department

New Hampton Police Department

New Hampshire Department of Transportation

New Hampton Auto Towing & Recovery

New Hampton Fish Hatchery

Waste Management

Jeremy Hiltz Excavating, Inc

The New Hampton School

2023 Summer Reading Program: All Together Now

Happy Fathers Day!!

 

Our Storytime books!

Our Storytime craft!! Our dads!

June Events for Kids

 

Chickens

For today's Storytime, we read three books about chickens. One of the books just went home with a young patron, but here are the other two. 

Our craft was chicken puppets. Two paper bodies were glued around a craft stick holder, then colorful (or real-looking) feathers and a paper comb and beak were added. We used our biggest googly eyes to make our chickens look perfect.  

Spring Flowers

I'm always so surprised to find a fabulous book at the library that has been right under my nose for years and years. Huck Runs Amuck by Sean Taylor is one of those books. The copyright date is 2011 and we've had it in our collection for many years - and I only just discovered it this Spring. It's about a mountain goat named Huck who loves flowers - to eat! It's beautifully illustrated by Peter Reynolds. It was so much fun to read, and kids really liked the funny story. 

                                                           

And when we were done listening, we made colorful, sparkly cupcake liner flowers, the kind that Huck would love to eat!!

Mothers Day

 

With Mothers Day approaching, this week we read books about Moms. Then we made a crown that said MOM and decorated it to give to our mothers to wear on their special day. They could also wear it upside down if they wanted to - and it would say WOW. 

That's a very good word for our mothers!

May Events for Kids

 

March: In Like a Lion

With last weekend's snow and the windy conditions of the past few days, we decided that March has indeed come in like a lion. For Storytime today, we read The Lion & The Mouse by Jerry Pinkney, paying close attention to the way the artist showed the emotions of the lion in this wordless picture book. We could tell he was both a ferocious and a kind being. Our other story was Woolbur by Leslie Helakoski, about a confident, free-spirited lamb who did things his own way. 

After our stories, we looked at our calendar and all the days left in this month. Would March have more wintery "lion" days with blustery weather? Or would it have more "lamb" days that looked and felt like Spring? We designed a two sided craft showing a lion on one side and a lamb on the other. Kids can use these for the remaining days of March to show and talk about their interpretation of the weather each day. 

Here's hoping March goes out like a lamb!

 

March Events for Kids

Round and Round

This week at Storytime, we had some books about circles and other shapes, and we also read a few familiar favorites. For our craft, kids designed with lots of different round shapes - using construction paper circles, big and small colored stickers, paper reinforcements, thin slices of pool noodle, and paint - with Q-tips for a brush! Some chose to design on white paper, some on black. Each craft was so unique - and fun!

"Take Your Child to the Library" Day 2023

 Thank you to the families who "dropped in" with their children today for our special library event!

Bookmarks to create!

Book-based LEGO Challenges! 

Story-related coloring, word searches, tasks, and games. 

A bag of goodies, a granola snack, and a free book!

He built a car - just like the boy in the story!

Love Stories for Little Kids

February is a month for love, so today we read two stories about the subject. The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson is a story about animals and the foods they love. Doesn't it make you wonder why the Cow loves cookies? We also read my favorite love story, Love Is My Favourite Thing by Emma Chichester Clark, written from the point of view of the author's dog, Plum. It's such a fun story! 

At craft time, we fashioned animals or people or scenes using hearts. Cut-out hearts, stick-on hearts, 

glittery hearts, plain hearts, all kinds of hearts. Pretty creative!

And look. Someone made a chair for our Pete the Cat. 💙