Monkey and Me by Emily Gravett

I love using this feltboard story, because I get the attendees to participate in the chant that repeats throughout the story:  “Monkey and me…monkey and me…”  As the group chants, they also pat their knees to the beat of the words.  Interactive fun!

Pictured here are the pieces I made for this feltboard version of Monkey and Me by Emily Gravett.  A little girl and her stuffed animal monkey have visited a zoo, and they list off each of the animals they saw there, including kangaroos, bats, penguins, elephants, and monkeys.  Click on image to enlarge:

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Blue Sea by Robert Kalan

Another in my continuing series of photo documentation of my feltboard stories. Today we are featuring the pieces I made for Robert Kalan’s classic picturebook Blue Sea.  Once again, this feltboard story isn’t too elaborate, and doesn’t look too exciting in a mere photo: this feltboard story is all about the telling and the using of the pieces in a dramatic way.  “Look out, little fish!!” I’ll say with a scared overtone to my voice as I add the medium fish to the board…and the kids always gasp a teeny bit in fear for little fish’s life.  Just enough excitement for the under-four age group.  Click on photo to enlarge:

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Photographic evidence

In lieu of today’s planned trip to the Bead Hive in Ayer to buy more beading supplies (turns out Ayer had its Memorial Day parade today, and not Monday – which I only learned as I almost got road-blocked in on Main Street in Ayer), I’ve decided to post a couple of photos of my new obsession, the leather wrapped bracelets. Click on images to enlarge:

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My new obsession

Man, it’s good to get out and do something DIFFERENT!

I just finished an adult education class, taught by Lily Chen, where I learned to make a leather wrap bracelet.  Ingredients are freshwater pearls (choose your color), brown or black leather, and a cute metal flower button.  Lily is a great teacher, and I learned fast and am now determined to make a million of these very cool bracelets – some for me, some for, oh, sisters and friends and such.

And the best part is that the materials for this totally rad bracelet cost all of fifteen dollars.  I’m sure if I were to buy this from some jewelry catalog (like maybe Sundance, which I love, by the way) it would cost a LOT more.

Actually, the best part is that I used my brain to do something non-work-related and creative and fun.  And I succeeded at it (unlike the pearl knotting class I took a few weeks ago, where I had a defective piece of silk and my knots wouldn’t slide and I got more and more frustrated and hot and sweaty and embarrassed at my incompetence).  It’s good to have a new obsession.  Abby happy.

Before you know it…

…also known as “Oh, &*%*$*@!!!”

My first school class visit is THIS FRIDAY afternoon.  Then the class visits begin for real – the big time – next Tuesday morning, June 1.  Yikes.  I’m sitting at home right now finalizing the summer calendar, parent letter, and summer reading guidelines, all of which need to be photocopied en masse and stuffed into the summer reading bags before I visit the school.  And if all that photocopying weren’t enough to give me heartburn, there’s also all the tweaking of the ReadsinMA website that needs to happen, the printing of posters for summer events, the creation of sign-up sheets for the summer events, the ordering of the summer prizes, the donation request letters, calling Firefighter O. to ask if the fire truck can visit the summer reading finale picnic in August, the creation and printing of the donation voting tickets, the en masse copying of the old-fashioned paper clock face time sheets, the purchasing of multiple cases of bottled water for movie nights, the purchasing of lots and lots and lots of bags of popcorn for movie nights, the shopping for all the fixin’s for the Ice Cream Social (not to mention the purchasing of and storage of the actual ice cream, which gives me heart palpitations), the choosing of some great new stories to read at my class visits…if I don’t stop there, I might totally freak out.

Oh, and now I can’t have lunch with my dad on Friday, which bums me out.  (Hey, Dad, can we reschedule for Monday?)

Wish me luck – I’ll need it to get through the next couple of weeks.  Though you know I’ll be having a good time despite being a stress-bucket.

Calendars and such

No post of any substance today, or probably all week:  summer reading is fast approaching, and I’m spending all of my free time finishing off the summer calendar (which takes a huge amount of work, believe it or not), ordering the summer reading prizes, writing the summer raffle donation request letters, and reading book reviews.  We’ve just been phenomenally busy at the library in the last few months, and I’m literally unable to complete any task that requires concentration while I’m there.  So I have been trying to console myself about the loss of my free time to work by drinking lots of Arnold Palmer iced tea, listening to fun CDs (right now it’s Adam Lambert’s CD – and I guarantee Jim will be mortified that I’m admitting that we both own Adam’s CD AND listen to it), and taking cat-ear-scratching breaks.  And no, this at-home work is not on the clock, for anyone who wonders.  🙂

Here’s a thought: we should play music at the library.  Background music, you know?  A little “Whataya Want From Me” would make the day go faster.  And I bet the little kids would love to bop around to it…

Coolest thing today

I’ve been feeling a little grumpy today – technically it’s my day off, but I have quarts and quarts of work to do AND the house needs cleaning AND there are piles of laundry to get through AND I need to fit in stuff like taking a walk and having lunch with Dad and cooking dinner for Jim…you get the idea.  It’s a Bad Abby Day.  Kind of like a Bad Hair Day (which is also true for me today), but more all-encompassing.

But then I went on to Google just now, and had a good chuckle when I saw the ode to PacMan.  And then, even better, I realized that you can actually play that PacMan game.  Awesome!!!  Guess what I’ll be doing instead of work for the next twenty minutes or so…

Five Little Monkeys

And another of my feltboard favorites, used often and with great gusto:  Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree, which I sometimes use as a simple fingerplay, and other times use in conjunction with Eileen Christelow’s book of the same name.  The monkey that appears to be white in this photo is actually a pale blue (far more attractive).  When presenting the story on the feltboard, I always have the children in attendance help me count out the monkeys, and sometimes we also name the colors of the various monkeys. This feltboard story helps me to remember that simplicity is often the best approach when making felt figures.  Click on image to enlarge:

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Bear Snores On

It’s time to update my online documentation of my library of homemade feltboard stories.  Today’s featured story is Karma Wilson’s Bear Snores On, one of my storytime favorites.  Notable in this feltboard interpretation are the awake bear’s moveable eyebrows, so that he can go from intimidating/scary to upset/crying to happy.  Unfortunately, these photos don’t do justice to two of my favorite figures in this story, the crow and the wren, who just look like a brown blotch and a black blotch in the photo but actually look pretty cool in person.  Click on image to enlarge:

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