Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Poetry, and a Poet-Tree!

April is Poetry Month and April 29th is Poem In Your Pocket Day - a day to carry a favorite poem and to share it with others. Since I can't share a poem from my pocket this year, I'll share one of my favorites with you here on the blog. 

I love Jack Prelutsky (what kid doesn't?) and this is one of my favorite poems by him - perfect for Spring weather! You can read it here...or listen to it here (sung by one of my favorite musicians Natalie Merchant!)... or watch an animated version here!

It's a very silly poem, but I like it because it's cleverly written - and it's about ice cream!

And, since it's Poetry Month, this week's take home craft is a Spring (Poet) Tree! Up until a few weeks ago, many trees here looked like this one:

Now, after a few weeks of warm weather and a little rain, some trees look like this:
Lots of trees get flowers in the Spring. Sometimes they're green so you think they must be leaves - but if you look carefully, you'll see tiny or odd-shaped little flowers that appear before the leaves. Take a walk, and go look at a tree! See how it's growing. 

Then, make your own Spring tree with our take-home kit: a paper plate, a sturdy brown paper trunk, and some thin strips of brown paper to snip or tear into branches. You can color the plate first if you want, or make some grass, or a blue sky. Then make the tree and add tissue paper "flowers" or "leaves" with the tiny tissue squares in the kit. A little Springtime for your wall or your refrigerator door!

Thursday, April 15, 2021

Frogs - and Toads!

Frogs! Have you seen them yet? Have you heard them at night? This week's take-home craft is a frog puppet. The folding of the paper for the puppet is a bit tricky at first, and there are simple directions in the kit for you adults to follow and to practice. But once you figure out how easy it is to fold one, you can make as many as you want - and turn them into other puppet animals, or even puppet people! I will definitely be making this versatile puppet base with kids over and over. I bet with some brown paper (or maybe a piece of a paper bag), you could even make a toad puppet at home. So call the library or email us if you want a take-home kit!

Speaking of frogs (and toads), here's one of my favorites as a quick read-aloud for this week. If you want to read more of this Frog & Toad Treasury, it's available for Curbside pickup!  And if you want a factual frog book for kids, check out Frogs by Gail Gibbons. We have the book at the library, and there's a good video of it here.

Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Nesting Time

Here's this week's take-home craft, just in time for Spring weather. Made of paper with real-but-fake feathers, some birds in a nest. All pieces are in the kit, and circles can be used to make two 2-part birds or four birds with one part only. The brown paper is fun to shred and can be used to add texture to the nest shape. Call or email if you'd like a kit. 

My favorite "nest" story is The Perfect Nest, by Catherine Friend. It's also one of my favorite read-alouds, because there are so many different voices to be made. It's another book where the detail in the pictures is important to the story, and I couldn't manipulate the book well enough to film it while reading it myself. So here's someone else's very good rendition of this very funny story!