And the final photo of the felt pieces for Eric Carle’s The Very Quiet Cricket – the dragonfly, the mosquitoes in the starry night sky, and the luna moth (click on image to enlarge):
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The Very Quiet Cricket, part II
Here is the next photo of felt pieces I made for Eric Carle’s The Very Quiet Cricket – the worm in the apple, the spittlebug, the cicada, and the bumblebee (click on image to enlarge):
In felt: The Very Quiet Cricket, part I
In response to overwhelming demands to see some of my felt board creations posted here (that would be you, Dan…), I have taken photos of the pieces I made last weekend for Eric Carle’s The Very Quiet Cricket. I’ll post the photos in three separate posts; today’s photo includes the pieces for the two small crickets, the cracked egg, the large cricket, the locust, and the praying mantis (click on image to enlarge):
Disaster…of sorts…
Last night I spent two and a half hours creating felt pieces for Eric Carle’s The Very Quiet Cricket. I went to bed at 10:30 feeling pretty darn proud of myself, because they turned out really well.
But this morning, when I tried to pack up the felt pieces for travel to the library, I discovered a minor crisis. A bit of a disaster. Despite having had all night to dry, the glue was still fresh and wet this morning. Ever tried to put a delicate felt praying mantis on the board when the glue is still wet? Not a pretty sight.
I tried to manage the crisis by putting each felt figure on a fresh rectangle of felt, to help hold it together, and then I used parchment paper as a protective layer between each piece and its neighbor.Â
The real challenge will come this morning as I try to tell the story while treating each piece as if it’s about to fall apart.Â
* (I know that someone is bound to lecture me now on the benefits of a hot glue gun, but there are a lot of reasons why I prefer Elmer’s white glue to a glue gun. And up till now, it’s never been an issue. Sigh.)
Textured table art
Yesterday was the art week in the preschool storytime rotation, and we had a blast.
First I read two books to the large group: Thing-Thing by Cary Fagan, a sweet story of a stuffed animal of no definable species who is given to a spoiled rich boy. The spoiled rich boy throws Thing-Thing out the fifth story window in a rage, and the book chronicles Thing-Thing’s fall past floors four, three, and two; Thing-Thing and the reader get to observe little slices of life on each of those floors, interspersed with Thing-Thing’s thoughts as he falls. I won’t give away the very happy ending to the story, but suffice it to say that the kids really liked the ending.
The second book was one of my favorites, Mr. Pusskins by Sam Lloyd, the story of a very grumpy, ungrateful cat who runs away from his adoring child Emily, only to discover life outside isn’t nearly so much fun. Mr. Pusskins, of course, comes to regret under-appreciating Emily and wishes he had never run away. My favorite scene in this story is when Mr. Pusskins calls Emily on the telephone after finding a MISSING poster with his (grumpy) photo and Emily’s phone number. “Meow?” Mr. Pusskins whimpers into the phone, and adoring Emily immediately knows who he is and comes to get him.
We also did a couple of fun fingerplays, and wrapped up the story portion of storytime with a fingertasting. I hadn’t used my fingertaster puppet with older kids before – Zebra has been monopolized by the toddlers up till this point – and I was blown away by how much this age group loves the humor and suspense of having their finger tasted. Zebra tasted only things that cats like today: one child tasted like tuna, another like kibbles, a third like olive oil (Ophy Cat’s favorite thing in the whole world). We had a great giggly time with Zebra.
And then it was time for process art. Today’s project: textured table art, from MaryAnn Kohl’s book Preschool Art. I spent a bit of time agonizing over whether I needed to set up the tables prior to storytime, or whether I could let the kids really be in on the whole process. Ultimately I reluctantly decided to set up the tables before the kids arrived, since this is a drop-in storytime with ever-increasing numbers of participating children. So I laid out four small tables with all kinds of cool things spread out underneath the butcher paper, and presented this project as part mystery (what’s under the paper?) and part art exploration (playing with rubbing the crayons over the objects).Â
It was a huge, huge, HUGE success. Lots of discoveries as kids figured out which items were hidden – shells, paper clips, feathers, leaves, grass, coins – and lots of experimentation with color and pressure. And what an orderly, wonderful bunch of kids. I had given a brief introduction to the project while all the kids were still seated on the floor, and had shown them the two types of crayons they might find in the buckets: crayons without any wrappers (perfect for this project) and crayons that still had their wrappers on. I told the group that if they had a crayon with a wrapper that they’d need to peel it off, and I pointed out the two wastebaskets that they could peel over. And guess what? Not a single crayon wrapper ended up on the floor. Very, very impressive for a large group of four through six year olds, most of whom were in the story room without a parent!
I love, love, love this preschool storytime, and really look forward to it from one week to the next. And yesterday’s meeting was a particularly wonderful time.
Storytime moment
This morning, in my Thursday Toddler storytime, I had a last-minute additional family. The mom called fifteen minutes prior, and asked if she could come to today’s storytime, since they’d had to drop out of the Monday storytime due to a conflict. “Sure,” I said, “No problem – see you soon.”
But I hadn’t realized that Mary’s older sister, Grace, who is four, also would be attending. Grace hadn’t come to the Monday storytimes with Mary (she must be in preschool on Mondays), and so I didn’t have a nametag for her. Usually kids don’t really notice whether or not they have a nametag, so I didn’t worry too much.
Mid-way through the storytime, though, Grace raised her hand, “Abby? I don’t have a nametag…”Â
“I’m sorry, sweetie, I didn’t know that you’d be coming today,” I said, “but I’m very happy that you’re here! I’ll make you a nametag for next week, ok?”
Even as she nodded ok, Grace’s eyes filled with tears. She was about to lose it.
“Would you like to wear my nametag, Grace?” Big, grateful, happy nod. And Grace was Abby for the rest of the storytime.
Hip Hip Hooray!
…and a HUGE sigh of relief.Â
Thanks for my birthday present, guys!
Where are those entries?
Ok, so three things are preventing me from posting as regularly as I’d like recently:
I’m taking an Italian class on Tuesday nights. A class that has homework.
I’m about to have a decade birthday, and am freaking out about it.
The upcoming election has me in a total funk, and I’m spending so much energy worrying about the future of this country that there’s little energy left over for blogging.
And this is where I beg: please, please, please, for my decade birthday present, please, please, please, may I have the good news that Barack Obama has been elected President? Please?Â
Felt stories
Last night I stayed up until ten o’clock working on two more feltboard stories: versions of Mouse’s First Halloween by Lauren Thompson and Humbug Witch by Lorna Balian. I’ll use the mouse story with this morning’s toddler storytime (replacing the hugely unsuccessful Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert that I used in the two Monday toddler storytimes), and I’ll use both stories with this afternoon’s preschool storytime.Â
Halloween is just about my favorite holiday, and I’m really looking forward to these two storytimes. It’s a great feeling when I find a story that translates well to a feltboard retelling, and an even better feeling when I actually have the time to create the felt pieces.
In other feltboard news, last Friday I hosted a preschool class for a storytime, and used my in-process pieces (in-process because this is such an involved story to translate to the medium of felt) for Where’s Spot? by Eric Hill. The kids loved the story, and one even cried out mid-story: “This is cool! It’s just like a puppet show!!”
Someday, I promise, I’ll post a few photos of my felt stories. I’m having so much fun making and using them that I’d really love to share them with the three people who read my blog…or is it four? 🙂
Process art
Thursday was the first time that I attempted a process art project in my preschool storytime. And it was one of the more wonderful experiences of my library career.
Quite a while ago, I had firmly decided that I wanted to pursue process art projects with this age group, but I was heavy on the concept, short on the specifics. So I was thrilled when I found MaryAnn Kohl’s book Preschool Art: It’s the Process, Not the Product. Not only did the title match my thinking, but the book is a well-thought-out and easy to use resource that also provides a wonderful photocopy-ready explanatory page to hand out to parents.
In planning this fall’s preschool storytimes, I decided to establish a three-week rotation: storytelling with puppets week one, feltboard story week two, and process art week three. That way we’re not overly heavy on the arts/craft angle, and we get to explore alternate ways to approach stories in two of the three weeks.
For the first process art project, I chose Kohl’s “Dark Sugar Chalk.” After reading two stories aloud, I explained to the nine kids in attendance that we needed to do some prep work for our art, then we’d sit back down for a last story before doing our artwork. This terrific bunch of kids took turns helping me measure out the water, add scoops of sugar, and stir the mixture, then everyone helped plunk pieces of chalk into the sugar water. Totally riveted, we noticed that little bubbles come out of the chalk, and that it immediately starts to turn a darker, brighter color.
While the chalk soaked, we read one last story, then packed up our carpet squares, moved the tables to the center of the room, and fished the chalk out of the water into dry tubs. And here came the best part: the kids colored with this bright, less smudgey chalk on black poster board, playing with the colors and the quality of the chalk, experimenting with using cotton balls to moosh the colors around, putting one layer of chalk on top of another…generally having a great time messing around with this new medium and discovering its qualities.
One of the children went back to the tub that contained the sugar water, and dipped some cotton balls in that mixture, then went back to his art and experimented with using those sugary cotton balls to smush and blend the colors. Another child dipped her finger into the sugar water, and noticed that the sugar hadn’t completely dissolved, so that she could trace almost invisible pictures in that layer of sugar. Yet another child discovered that he could draw pictures with the chalk on the inside surface of the dry plastic tubs. Needless to say, all of these discoveries were shared with the group, and each of the children tried a variety of techniques and approaches that I would never have anticipated.
It was incredibly fun, and so rewarding to see how the kids responded. I had a fantastic time, and can’t wait ’till our next project!
Note on materials used: I bought sheets of black poster board, and cut each sheet into four pieces (bigger pieces wouldn’t have fit well on the tables we use, though bigger pieces would be a lot of fun). The chalk was remarkably hard to find: I went to five different stores before finding regular Crayola colored chalk at Crosby’s Supermarket in Concord. The plastic tubs are storage tubs from IKEA – they’re perfect for this kind of project. Not too big, not too deep, not too expensive, easy to carry because they have a broad lip all around the edge.