May Events

 

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. 💙

Storytime Snowmen

Here are two of my favorite books with snowmen. Pip and Squeak by Ian Schoenherr is about two mice trying to get a present to a friend at a snowy birthday party. Perfect Soup by Lisa Moser is about Murray (who's in a hurry) trying to get a special ingredient to make perfect soup. I love to read them aloud and I like the surprises in each of these books.

Between stories, we crafted snowmen! We used pre-cut white circles, white chalk and crayon, and scrap paper for embellishments like clothes and carrot noses. Some of us used a hole punch to make snowflakes! As you can see, just like snowflakes, no two snowmen are alike! 

February Events for Kids

 

LEGO Robotics

This was Week 3 of Robotics Club, hosted at the Gordon-Nash Library by New Hampton School students who are presently part of their school's Robotics program. Here's Ashley (and Ben in the background), explaining the parts of the robot to groups of New Hampton Community School students. 

Kids are learning to program the robot using Scratch on an iPad. NHS students set up simple challenges for them as they learned the program and the capabilities of their robots. 

Moving the robot from a start line to a finish. 

A race to the finish. 

Man-made (kid-made) tunnels to go through on the way to the finish line. 

We have four more weeks of Robotics! Stay tuned!

Animals in Snow - and a surprise!

 Under and Over the Snow by Kate Messner is the title of the book we read and talked about today at Storytime. It tells of the adventure a child has as she skis through the woods with her father and learns about the winter habits of the animals who live there. In the book, we found squirrels and chipmunks, mice and voles, rabbits and frogs, a fox and a bear, and many more animals!

At craft time, we took blank cardstock glued to a craft stick and decorated it to look like one of the animals in the story. After the mice and owls and other animals were finished, we played with them at our brand new table-top Puppet Theater, making their sounds as they moved over and under the cotton "snow"!