Happy Birthday!

How do you make the 200 year New Hampton School Bicentennial relevant to kids? It's a BIRTHDAY!

For our special Bicentennial Storytime, we read Clever Jack Takes the Cake by Denise Fleming. It's a story about Jack, a poor but clever boy who finds creative ways to bake a birthday cake for the Princess's birthday. He runs into all sorts of obstacles on his way to deliver the cake to the Royal Party, and his gift does not arrive as planned. But, being the clever person he is, Jack finds a way to make everything right by the time he meets the Princess. 

After the story, we made Birthday Crowns for a craft, colored with crayons and markers and festooned with spangles and pompoms, stars and stickers.

When we were finished, we celebrated with Birthday Cupcakes. Happy Birthday, New Hampton School!

The Mole Family's Christmas

Family Fun!

Fun for the whole family on a Saturday afternoon at the Gordon-Nash at New Hampton School!

Saturday Stars

STEM Storytime: Seeds in Autumn

Saturday STEM Storytime participants chose to read The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle, about a seed that gets blown from a flower in autumn, then travels on the wind to a far-away location. There it stays, on the ground, under the snow, in the mud, until Spring. I bet you can guess what happens next!!

Moving on the wind is one of the ways that seeds travel in the fall. They also get moved by animals. Squirrels take acorns and bury them, birds eat berries and fruit and poop out the seeds, dogs (and kids!) run through fields and get seeds stuck to their pants and socks! Seeds are clever to find so many ways to get around!

We donned out safety glasses and set to work finding seeds in all sorts of dead-looking plants and flowers. We used magnifying glasses to closely investigate our findings. Using tweezers, we pulled marigold and cosmos seeds from dead flower heads. We found that hard iris pods make good shakers when the seeds rattle inside them. We noticed that dead lupin pods had opened up into spirals and wondered if the seeds were f-l-u-n-g out into the air! We crumbled the center of a dead sunflower to find the shiny black sunflower seeds all lined up in a pattern underneath. We carefully opened a milkweed pod and - more patterns! We saw the lined-up, organized seeds tucked away inside the pod. Once the air from the room got to the milkweed seeds, can you guess what happened? Up and away they went, all over the Children's Room! Wheeee!!

Before kids left, we gathered seeds to take home in half-envelopes, and labeled them so we'd remember what plants they came from. We'll scatter them at home, then see what happens! But we know that nothing will happen until fall and winter are over - and Spring comes back, so they can grow into plants again!

Valentines! ♡

How lucky are we that Valentine's Day was on a Storytime Thursday? We read books about Valentines and love, then made cards and greetings for those we care about. There was lots of busy cutting and glueing going on today! And a bit of dark chocolate for all!

January's Storytime Saturday

January's Storytime Saturday was all about winter. We read Jan Brett's newest book, The Snowy Nap, about Hedgie, who wants to stay awake so he won't miss all the winter fun. We also read one of my favorites, Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner, which shows a child and parent having fun cross-country skiing in the woods where animals are hibernating. This book is full of facts about the ways that woodland animals survive during the cold winter months.

We made snowmen from felt and decorated them with paper and ribbons. With white crayons, we drew snowflakes on white paper, then washed over them with blue watercolor paint. We added shaving cream to baking soda to make a snowy mixture. And, because we read about it in Over and Under the Snow, we watched this video of a fox leaping high into the air to catch his lunch.

Pajama Storytime

Yes! Pajamas at the library! Yesterday morning, we gathered for Christmas stories and hot chocolate and a Christmas craft. Kids left with decorated reindeer hats and red noses - looking like Rudolph! Merry Christmas to us!

STEM Storytime: Magnetism

We had magnetic fun at the library during May's S.T.E.M. Storytime. We had so much fun, we never read a story! But we had a magnet book that we could refer to if we wanted.

We figured out that one end of a magnet attracts one end of another magnet, but repels the other end. So opposites attract! Some magnets were marked with N and S for North and South, but many were not marked - because they were toys!

We had Magnetic Thinking Putty, like slime, that was attracted by a giant, strong magnet. What was in the slime that made the magnet attract it? We had a rock, called hematite, that could be picked up by a tiny but powerful magnet. There was iron in the rock, and magnets attract iron. 

We made a looong string of magnets so tiny they were hard to pick up, but so strong that they were hard to manipulate. They just wanted to find another magnetic item to stick to!

We played a hard game called "Bells", where you had to use a magnetic wand to pick up only the color of bells you had decided to collect. The magnet in the wand was so powerful, it could pick up a whole line of bells. But if you got the wrong color, your turn was over. It was pretty tricky - but fun.

We even had Magformers to build with, thanks to the Royea family who let us borrow their sets. They're great toys, because the magnets are so powerful! 

STEM Storytime: "March Mathness"

Our program this month featured the "M" of S.T.E.M - Math!  There were two book choices, and participants picked A-B-A-B-A : a book of pattern play by Brian P. Cleary. So many patterns were shown in this factual book, even patterns that the author didn't write about! After the book, we made our own patterns - with craft sticks, cubes, pattern blocks, and even pony beads on a pipe cleaner.

Next, we experimented with styrofoam balls and cut milkshake straws to make plain and solid geometric shapes. Some even joined several shapes together!

Before we ended, we collected data by tallying the numbers of patrons who had shoes with laces and shoes without. When we had the data, we made a T chart with two sides - one side for shoelaces, one side for no shoelaces. We stacked up squares to represent our data on the chart. Can you guess which had more and which had less?

STEM Storytime: Henry Builds a Cabin

At our February S.T.E.M. Storytime, we read Henry Builds a Cabin by D. B. Johnson. It's based on the story of Thoreau, who built a tiny cabin in Walden woods. He was creative and thrifty and built his home just big enough for a all his needs. After the story, we built, too - using cubes, small plastic glasses, and craft sticks. 

Before we left, one of our patrons read a book she had written and illustrated all by herself! It was super!