Category Archives: Storytime

Book groups, Pandemic, Storytime

And another anniversary

As we inch back towards “normal” (or the closest equivalent to normal that is possible), I’m marking another anniversary. Two years ago today I ran my last indoor in person storytime at 10:30 in the morning. By the mid afternoon, I was worrying about whether I should hold storytime the next day. By early evening, I had cancelled the storytime that was scheduled for March 12, 2020, and had put out publicity saying something along the lines of: “Out of an abundance of caution, we have decided to cancel all children’s programs at the library for the next few weeks. Thank you for your understanding!” On the morning of March 12 there were a couple of families who hadn’t read their email and showed up for storytime – families who were puzzled and perhaps a bit annoyed by the “abundance of caution” decree.

We all know what happened next: that the situation was far more serious than any of us had thought, and the world shut down. As I discussed in last year’s anniversary post, in late March of 2020 I switched to all virtual programming, which was a Herculean effort requiring 80 hours a week of work to adapt to the world of virtual programming (for any who wonder: no, children’s librarians don’t get paid overtime – at least this one doesn’t – and those extra 40 hours a week were unpaid and came from a place of me wanting to provide the best services possible to my beloved library peeps). Last summer I switched again, this time to outdoor programming, which I really love. I’ve continued with outdoor programming through the winter (yesterday 21 people attended my outdoor Mother Goose on the Loose storytime on a chilly morning with fresh snow on the ground!) and had planned to add in indoor programming starting in January…but then Omicron hit and put a huge wrinkle in those plans. Back came the virtual programming (blech) for half of my storytimes and all of my book groups. Though a great option to keep us all safe, it’s not really the programming option of choice anymore, and I can’t wait to pack up the lovely camcorder, tripod, microphone, and lights that I bought.

So what’s next? With very cautious optimism, I’m planning a return to indoor in person programming on April 4. All programs that have been virtual in the last few months will move to limited enrollment, pre-registration required indoor programs, with masks required for all participants over the age of two per vote of the library Trustees. (The outdoor storytimes will continue for those who feel safer outdoors.)

In late November and early December I allowed myself to get really excited about the planned return to indoor programs in January, and it was a real gut-punch and morale destroyer when I had to go back to virtual, so I’m not allowing myself to get excited this time around. I’m hopeful, I really am, but…but…but… what can I say? I’ll believe it when I see it? It will be great if it happens this time? Hopefully we’re headed on the right track? Only time will tell?

It’s been an exhausting two years, and when you couple pandemic programming and librarianship with me being in graduate school, let’s just say that I am pooped (and it also explains why I rarely post on my blog these days). Fingers crossed that we’re moving on to better times!

Librarianship, Library events, Pandemic, Storytime

A Strange Anniversary

March 11, 2020 was the date of my last in-person storytime, which means that we are heading towards the one year anniversary of when library services as we knew them ceased, and library services as they are now began to evolve. Though it would seem like it’s a sad anniversary, I’m actually feeling – dare I say it? – hopeful these days. The air has that lovely damp springy feel, even on bitter cold days like yesterday, and earlier sunrises and later sunsets make everything seem better. I’m still double-masking, and I’m still trying my best to keep far apart from coworkers and library patrons, and I haven’t been into a store in months (Jim has been vaccinated for his job, so he handles the shopping), and I’ll continue to be vigilant about keeping safe, but…things are looking up? I hope?

At this point I’ve done so many Zoom storytimes that they almost feel natural (almost, sort of…), but now that spring is coming I’m contemplating how to handle outdoor storytimes at my library. It seems like a simple thing: just move the storytime outside and keep people socially distanced. But then I start thinking about the details, and I realize how complicated this endeavor will be. My library is on a large area of land, and those grounds are well used by everyone in town. People walk their dogs there, students from the middle and high schools practice sports there, students walk through the library grounds to the library parking lot to get picked up at the end of the school day, the elementary school will probably have outdoor classrooms there again once the weather is warmer – you get the idea. I need to figure out a way to mark out a space that is just for storytimes. No dogs, no sports teams, no classes, no walkers. And that space needs to be near the electrical outlet on the historic front of the building, because I’ll need to amplify my voice. So problem one is: how do I mark out that space and keep it for storytimes only? (Note that there isn’t the possibility of having a second staff member help me with crowd control, since we are short-staffed and extremely busy with filling curbside requests.)

Next problem is how to adequately amplify my voice. I have a small amp that I use for storytimes in our large program room, but I doubt that it will be loud enough for an outdoor storytime. The Friends of the Library are short of cash at this point, since they couldn’t have their annual book sale last year, and most likely won’t have one this year. I’ve already spent a lot of my own money to purchase the camcorder setup for Zoom storytimes, so I can’t spend more of my own money. I applied twice for Cares Act Grants, but was denied both times. Surely there must be another grant that I could apply for?

Along those same lines is that I can’t hand out scarves and musical instruments during the infant storytime. In normal times, I go around the room passing out instruments to everyone, and then collect them, and then later in the storytime I do the same with scarves. Other “regular” storytime highlights are the throwing of the pig stuffed animal – where I go around the room and give each child a chance to throw the pig – and pulling the felt Humpty Dumpty off of the felt board, where children line up and take turns pulling Humpty down (a great way for young children to practice turn-taking, patience, and also supporting other by cheering them on). Clearly these things are not options right now! I had hoped to get the Cares Act Grant to purchase enough instruments, scarves, small stuffed pigs, and felt Humptys for all attendees, so that each family could have their own storytime kit that they would bring with them each time. Libraries are free to all, so I can’t really ask people to purchase a kit from me at cost. I also can’t assume that all families have these items in their homes; though it’s likely that most people could cobble together something to use, what about the families who can’t?

And then there’s the biggest issue of all – the one that I don’t have a solution for at all. I won’t be able to accommodate all my regular storytime families at these outdoor storytimes, so I’m going to have to ask people to rotate and take turns attending in person. I had thought that I could just set up my camcorder and laptop and livestream via Zoom to the families who aren’t in person on any given day…but then I started thinking about how impossible that would be to manage. I can’t moderate the Zoom waiting room and attendees while I present to and pay attention to the in person crowd while I make sure that no one walking by accidentally dumps my very expensive camcorder to the ground (I picture a happy running dog doing this!). In other words, a single staff member can’t possibly run all these things at once (see above for why another staff member can’t be spared to assist). One solution might be to run more storytimes – to do the outdoor storytime, pack everything up and then go inside to run an indoor virtual storytime for everyone else – but I literally can’t fit that into my day. I’m having a hard enough time keeping up with all of the curbside requests that need to be filled, and rarely have time to work on the essential task of collection development. Adding additional storytimes would cut into curbside fulfillment, and also pretty much eliminate my ability to do collection development (which is not only essential, but also just about my favorite part of my job).

Of course, there are other issues, too, which I won’t discuss here, including what to do if it rains, whether the group of attendees will be allowed to sing (I’ll need to talk to the local board of health), and how on earth will I be able to project my voice while wearing a mask (will my voice be too muffled for the microphone to pick it up?). And will my young patrons be upset to see me wearing a mask? And the list goes on.

All this is the long way of saying that I can’t wait to get back to some form of in-person storytimes, but there are a lot of obstacles to overcome before I can pull this off. Yikes!

Book groups, Librarianship, Library events, Pandemic, Storytime, Summer reading

Pivot

It’s been almost a year since my last post, and I can’t believe how different my work life is from one year ago. It’s not something I would ever have predicted, and, frankly, my mind is still reeling with the changes at almost nine months into pandemic restrictions.

At this time a year ago, I was just finishing my required class on technology for information professionals. The final project for that class was to create your own website on the Simmons server, which I then transferred over to my own domain. I loved having a website that actually had content and photos and that showed what I was doing in my job – it was pretty fantastic (even if my web skills are a bit amateurish). But today I had to face the fact that my website was a snapshot in time of how I did my job pre-pandemic, and that it no longer reflected the reality of my work life.

Under the “projects” page on my website, I talked about all the great things that I had as goals for myself for 2020: applying for an LSTA Mind in the Making grant to upgrade the children’s room playspaces; adding great new stations to the once-monthly sensory playtimes; and coming up with descriptive materials in multiple languages to better serve storytime attendees who are not native speakers of English.

And now? There are no children in the children’s room, not since March 13, and thus no need to upgrade playspaces. Indeed, when we reopen (and who knows when that will be) there won’t be any play materials out in order to limit surfaces that need cleaning and to help everyone maintain social distancing.

Sensory playtimes feel like a sweet memory of an innocent time when parents and children from multiple families could be in an enclosed space together (the story room), playing with shared materials like rice tubs and water tables and oobleck. Sensory playtimes were hip and happening a year ago, and there were so many awesome new stations that I looked forward to adding to that program; now, though, I don’t anticipate being able to run a sensory playtime again for a very long time, if ever.

And the goal of making in-person storytimes more accessible to all attendees also seems like something from a more innocent past. The sad fact of the virtual storytimes that I now offer is that they are actually more limiting and less accessible to all: children with hearing impairments, for instance, are not well-served by a storytime on video. Those young children can’t read captions, and I can’t wear the teacher microphone that connects to the child’s hearing aid or cochlear implant. Parents who are non-native speakers of English cannot be provided with handouts at the time of the storytime that explain the order of the lesson and the purpose of each lesson part. Nor, frankly, do I have the time right now to come up with such handouts, since my workload has at least doubled, if not tripled, with the addition of curbside service provision.

There have been so many pivots in my job in the last nine months that I feel a bit dizzy. There’s the technology I’ve had to master: Zoom, Facebook Premiere, YouTube, Screencast-o-Matic, Adobe, Canva, Beanstack, Google Forms, and I know there are others that I’m forgetting to list. I’ve had to first learn how to do storytime in a virtual format, and then how to use a camcorder and HDMI converter to live stream a higher quality of video (it took a surprisingly long time for me to figure out the camcorder dilemma). Summer reading had to become a completely virtual experience, with curbside pickup of the limited prizes that we could afford. To save money on prizes, I had to learn how to make giant lawn pinwheels, and then spent hours this summer assembling 114 of those pinwheels. Book groups have gone virtual, and have expanded to include 1st and 2nd graders and adults. Other programs have fallen by the wayside, like the weekly game hour, because those programs don’t translate well to a virtual format.

And almost all of my patron interactions now take place via email, rather than in person. Where I used to walk around the room with a child reader recommending books by putting the books into their hands for them to assess – now I fill paper curbside bags with books that I hope they’ll like, and then set the bags out for pickup. Some parents will send me photos or anecdotes about their children’s reactions to the books in the bags, which brightens my days but isn’t quite the same as talking to a child in person. The best parts of my days used to be interacting with kids and their caregivers; now I work in a very lonely isolation in an empty, joyless children’s room. Though I’m technically an introvert, I also thrive on human interactions (I think of myself as a workplace extrovert), and I’m finding that there is nothing sadder for me than a children’s room with no one in it but me. It’s just a room now, not a children’s room.

And this doesn’t even touch on the misery of wearing a mask forty hours a week, nor the stress of doing curbside duty each day when there is always at least one patron (usually more) who will come up to me without a mask on. Talk about feeling powerless and vulnerable.

I know I’m not alone in feeling blue right now, and I know that things are far, far worse for many people – for those who have lost a loved one, those who are suffering from long-term effects of COVID-19, those who have lost their jobs, their homes, their livelihood, those who have fallen into depression, those who are trying to juggle working from home and supporting their children who are doing remote learning…the list goes on and on and on.

All I can do for now is to continue to try to do my job as best I can, and to try to support others who are struggling as best I can. It’s not much, but it’s something.

Children, Storytime

On Process Art

I’ve always been a proponent of process art, though I didn’t know that official term until about ten years ago. When I was growing up, my mother – who was a Kindergarten through third grade teacher and also an artist – would talk to me about teaching art to young children, and about how important it is to not limit children by presenting them with a set, teacher-made example that shows the children there is only one correct way to make art, thereby squelching creativity and artistic exploration.

Her lessons stayed with me through my time as a camp counselor in my late teens and early twenties, and through my multiple regular babysitting gigs through high school and college, and even through my time teaching special education students at an elementary school, though I was responsible for teaching them reading, writing, and phonology and not art. And when I became a children’s librarian a little over fourteen years ago, I knew I finally had the venue to really engage young children with art in the most creative, explorative sense.

As I tried to figure out how to implement this type of art, I searched the library catalog and the internet for inspiration…and somehow the first search term that I entered turned out to be the correct one: process art. Perhaps my mother had used this term, and I just don’t remember her saying those words, or perhaps I was able to distill the concept down to its bare essentials, but however I got there, I was able to find some amazing materials available for use in my programs. The most useful resource that I found in that initial search, and which I still use regularly today, is MaryAnn Kohl’s book Preschool Art: It’s the Process, Not the Product. Along the way I’ve found some other print resources that are hugely useful, such as Asia Citro’s books and also Meri Cherry’s books, as well as some blogs that focus on process art and preschool education.

For yesterday’s Art & Stories for 4’s & 5’s I needed a process art project that was simple but wintery, since I was doing a themed winter storytime with the group. The books I read yesterday were The Storm Whale in Winter by Benji Davies and Here Comes Jack Frost by Kazuno Kohara, so I wanted a project that was complementary to the books. Happily, I found a wonderful, easy project on the Stay At Home Educator blog that used materials I had readily available.

I gave each child a nice thick piece of watercolor paper, a large paintbrush, and a palette loaded with three colors of paint: white, royal blue, and turquoise. It was great to see how different each of their paintings turned out – all in wintery blues and whites, but each completely unique. As each child finished the painting part of their project, I handed them a bottle of white glue and let them have at it squeezing glue on their paintings. Interestingly, the one six year old in the group kept painting far longer than the other children; developmentally, she was in a different place when it came to the painting portion of the project.

So much glue was squeezed on, in lots of cool formations: some large and goopy blobs, some delicate gluey tracings, and one that was just glue along the bottom of the page while the blues of the painting covered the top of the page. And then when they were each ready I passed them a small cup with a couple of tablespoons of sea salt in it (I didn’t have Epsom salt on hand, and the sea salt worked quite well). The group had a great time spreading salt over their paintings, and it was also great fine motor skill practice and problem solving, as some children delicately pinched and sprinkled bits of salt over their paintings, others put the salt in the palm of their hands and shook it over the painting, and still others used the cup to shake the salt. Some of the children even took it a step further and shook the salt around their papers and then funneled the excess salt back into their yogurt cups. (Others, of course, went for the “as much salt as possible approach” and pillaged the discarded salt of their peers to enhance the large sparkly salt pile on their own painting.)

As the children were nearing the end of their creative process I called in their grownups to come see what they had made. This is my favorite part, especially with this group of intuitively awesome grownups, since all kinds of great conversations take place between the children and their adults: “Tell me what you did here!” “I love the colors that you used – how did you make that blue?” “The sparkles are so beautiful – what are they? Salt? Wow!!!”

All in all, it was a wonderful last preschool art storytime of this decade, and yet another affirming process art experience.

Children, Feltboard, Librarianship, Storytime

Another reason I love my job

File this one under the category of “Why I love my job.” (It’s a very full file, for the record!)

One of my storytime regulars, who is not yet two years old, renamed me today – I am now Humpty Dumpty.  This verbal little cutie kept chattering away before storytime: “Humpty Dumpty taking sweater off”  “Humpty Dumpty drink water”  “Humpty Dumpty sing now?”

And then when storytime was over:  “Abby play trains now?”

So I guess I’m back to being Abby, but it was kind of fun being Humpty Dumpty…  🙂

(Pictured here is the Humpty Dumpty felt piece that we use at the conclusion of each Mother Goose on the Loose storytime…)
Librarianship, Storytime

A Day (or Two) in the Life of a Children’s Librarian

I always get a good giggle when someone I don’t know very well says to me, “Oh, you’re a children’s librarian? How sweet. That’s a pretty sedentary job, isn’t it?”  [Yes, doctors in particular like to say that to me, as they assess how active I am.]   Or, “You’re a children’s librarian?  That must be such a nice quiet job!”  Or, “It must be nice to read books all day!”

Before I go any further with this post, let me make it abundantly clear that I would hate to have a job that was sedentary or quiet or even a job where I got to read books all day.  I actually love the frenetic craziness of my work world, and I love the absolute unpredictability of each work day.  

Having said that, there are certain weeks like this one where even I cannot believe how busy I am.  So, for the sake of posterity, and for the sake of busy children’s librarians everywhere, here is a glimpse of this week at my job…

Yesterday (Monday) started off with discovering that the group who used the large program room on Saturday night had left all the chairs out, and also had forgotten to sweep and get rid of the trash (we have a big mouse problem in our building – old buildings in the country tend to be that way!). So before I could set up for storytime I had to stack fifty chairs in short order, sweep the floor, and ask Pete (former Trustee and current amazing volunteer) if he could take down and put away the speakers. Thank goodness Pete was there to do that, since I actually don’t know how to maneuver those heavy speakers down off their stands.

Then, fifteen minutes later (I stack chairs and clean quickly!), I set up for storytime and ran an absolutely lovely Mother Goose on the Loose program for a wonderful group of dedicated attendees. There is no better way to start a Monday, in my opinion, than to sing to and interact with a group of the youngest children and their caregivers – it is completely soul-affirming and rejuvenating.

Once storytime was over, I looked at the library website on my phone to see whether I could set up for my Tuesday afternoon program, which would be a lovely and efficient treat, since our program room is heavily used, and also very far away from the children’s room, so that it is hard for me to get up there to prep the room for my programs. It looked hopeful, so I went downstairs to check with my director about the state of the calendar.

She checked, and indeed it was hopeful: the R—- group had cancelled their Monday night room reservation, which left only the W—- book group with a Tuesday noontime reservation. We agreed that I could set up most of the room for my program, and just leave three tables and twelve chairs set up for the book group on the side with a view of the pond.

Back upstairs to unstack those fifty chairs, and then to arrange all eighty-nine chairs in a configuration that worked for the book group and for me. My Tuesday program (a presentation on Birds of Prey) also needs three six-foot tables, so I brought those out and arranged them. Done!

Back downstairs, where I first put away the Mother Goose accoutrements and then finalized planning for the 1:30 Art & Stories for 4’s & 5’s. Feltboard story: Froggy Gets Dressed by Jonathan London (felt pieces by me), check. Musical instruments: mini maracas, check. Music to play: Jim Gill’s Sneezing Song album, check. Pre-read the books for the day, including one of my absolute favorites, A Visitor for Bear by Bonny Becker, check. Set up the art project (Chalk Dip from MaryAnn Kohl’s Preschool Art), check. Then into the story room to pull out the small art tables, the feltboard easel, and the carpet pieces, check.

[ As you can see, by midday I haven’t had a sedentary moment yet! 😉 ]

Just as I sat down to check email, my boss called down to tell me that the book group had cancelled for tomorrow, and that she and one of the reference librarians were going up to the program room to take away the tables and reestablish the auditorium style seating that I would need on Tuesday. I said, “I’ll be right there to help you!” and bounced up two flights of stairs (but really the equivalent of four flights) and together the three of us finished setting up the room for my Tuesday program. Teamwork!

Then back downstairs to catch my breath and finally check my email at 1:00. Several emails needed my attention, so I quickly typed replies before the four- and five-year-olds arrived for storytime.

Storytime was wonderful – this group is so much fun to be with, so full of positive energy and giggles and creativity. We all loved the stories, and the mini maracas were a huge hit. And the feltboard story went over SO well that I realized that I should really make some additional felt stories for this group while I’m on break from school (over the years I’ve made at least fifty felt stories, but for my own sanity it’s time for some new ones!).

After cleaning up from storytime, it was time to swap out the small art tables for the large six-foot full height tables for the 3:30 GraviTrax program. Feltboard safely stowed away, chairs tucked into the closet, then I brought out the GraviTrax sets and set up the pieces on the tables so that the two teams would have equal “special” pieces and that the common building pieces would be on the middle table accessible to both teams. [Find out more about GraviTrax here.]

This brought me to 2:45…and I realized that I could actually have a bite to eat if I was quick. So off to the staff room I went, and got to chat with the electricians who are upgrading our lighting while I quickly ate my yogurt and banana. There were some tempting cookies on the table, and of course I took one, and S—-, the head electrician, said “Hey, no eating cookies!” To which I replied, with a wink, “I think I’ve earned it!”

By 3:15 my highschool senior volunteers for the GraviTrax program had arrived, which was great because it gave me time to give the new volunteer an overview of how the program works. It’s wonderful having such mature, awesome volunteers in whom I have complete and total trust! GraviTrax was a hit, as it always is, and the volunteers and I were hard-pressed to get the kids to finish up their construction by 4:30. (If you haven’t had the chance to witness GraviTrax in action, it is an amazing way for kids to learn about force and motion and gravity while having a really, really fun time.)

Then it was time to put away all the GraviTrax pieces, and to put away the six-foot tables and bring back out the art tables, and to set the story room up for the 6:30 evening program, a Polar Express Storytime run by the senior Girl Scout troop.

In the midst of this cleanup, my boss came downstairs with a woeful, apologetic look on her face, and with the bad news that the R—- group who had cancelled their Monday night reservation for the large program room hadn’t actually meant to cancel, and that they were coming after all…which means that I need to go in early this morning to set up the large program room for the afternoon Birds of Prey program before the first of four 5th grade classes arrives at 10:00 today for their research instruction.

Having reminded myself of that, I think I’d best continue this “day in the life” post sometime in the future, and get myself to work right now to set up for today, Tuesday! 🙂

Children's book reviews, Children's literature, Librarianship, Storytime, Summer reading

Happy September

I actually love the month of September – even though we’re busy at the library after school with kids coming over from the elementary, middle, and high schools, the mornings are lovely and quiet and I get tons done.

Sometimes my storytime regulars ask why I take a couple of weeks off from storytimes in September, and I always reply, “So I can get some ordering done after the summer!”  Summers at the library are almost relentlessly busy, and it’s difficult to focus on reading book reviews in The Horn Book Magazine and Kirkus when kids are coming up to the desk every few minutes to redeem summer prizes or ask for summer reading book suggestions.  I need these next few weeks to pay some careful attention to ordering, and to make sure our shelves are fully stocked with the latest and greatest as winter comes around the corner.

But there’s another reason I take a couple of weeks off from storytimes in September: it’s vitally important to take a little time off from them so that I get refreshed and revitalized.  Yes, I could keep plugging along at the usual stiff storytime pace that I keep up the rest of the year (five or so storytimes a week), but we all benefit from me having just a few weeks off.  I actually love that I get nervous and edgy before my first September storytime, because it means that I’m coming back to storytimes with a fresh perspective.  If I’m nervous, then I’m fully engaged, and if I’m fully engaged, then storytimes are soooo much more fun for everyone.

One of my greatest fears is getting stale in my job, which is why I’m always pushing myself to do more and to try new and different things.  And by stepping back and taking a break, I can look at my storytimes from a bit of a distance and evaluate what I’m doing well and what I need to do better.  I’ll never go so far as to film myself doing a storytime, because that would destroy my self-confidence, but I’m very capable of being objective about my own performance.  I know that I overuse certain phrases, and I’m aiming to not say those phrases coming up in September.  I know that I’m a little afraid of using parent tips in my storytimes, but I need to get over that hump and start incorporating those tips more regularly.  And I know that by the end of the summer I was a bit tired and worn out, and I’m glad to take this breather and regain my enthusiasm.

So the next few weeks will be devoted to freshening my storytime perspective, and spending some intense time doing my absolute favorite part of my job: ordering books.  Yay!  Happy September, everyone!

Children, Storytime, Teaching

Best art project ever…

4 Comments

Well, ok, maybe it’s not the *best* art project ever (how could I pick a favorite, really?), but today’s process art project was phenomenally fun, and also a great example of the cool things that you can do with art in a preschool storytime.

I’ve never been a fan of craft projects as part of storytime, since it pains me to limit the imagination of those beautiful four and five year old minds: one predetermined “right” final product teaches kids early on that there is a right way and wrong way with art.  How dismally depressing for the child who struggles to achieve the perfect final result while others are creating exactly what the teacher/librarian/adult prescribed.  And how limiting for those who are more dextrous, those who have the fine motor skills to really push their artistic bounds.

And so I’ve gone with process art projects, which have been incredibly fun and satisfying for everyone, adults and kids.  [Thanks, as usual, to Mary Ann Kohl and her book Preschool Art for providing the projects and the inspiration.]  Today we went with more of a group project than usual and made salad spinner art – page 217 in Kohl’s book – and I have to admit I was a little worried before storytime by how this project would work.  I never know exactly how many kids will be at the preschool storytime (today we had five), and it can be hard for kids of this age to work together and have patience while everyone has a turn creating.  But I also felt that it was important to try, and so we all shared one salad spinner to make our art.

It was fantastic.  Truly fantastic.  All five kids were great about taking turns, and everyone was fully involved in the process of each piece of art.  How would those two colors work put next to each other like that?  How would the super fast turning of the salad spinner by the child in charge affect the end result?  What about the child who chose to turn it slowly – would the paint look different than the super fast turning?  And, best of all, the questions about why the paint was doing what it was doing – moving us into a gentle discussion of force and motion.

It was so much fun, in fact, that even the adults were anxious to take a turn after the kids were finished.  One adult discovered the magic of turning the spinner first one way, then the next, which gave a completely different look to the paint on the paper.  Which then drove some of the kids to ask to make just one more, please, in which they experimented with alternating rotation and also with more bold placement of color on the page.  So we talked not just about art, but also about science and color mixing (I got out the color paddles from the STEM kit) and we also learned how to use an eye dropper.*

We kept at it for a full forty-five minutes, and I think many of the families will be going home and finding an old salad spinner to experiment with on their own.  It was awesome.

*  N.B.:  the eye droppers were the one change I made from Kohl’s directions in the book; we have eye droppers on hand, and I thought it would be cool to introduce the kids to using them.  And it worked!

Cats Dogs Plants Animals, Storytime

Spring is coming…and thanks

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I have absolute proof that spring is coming, despite the snow currently fluffing through the air:  at Monday morning’s storytime, several of my regular attendees – kids who are always attentive – were practically bouncing off the walls.  Some of these usually docile children even had to be taken out the story room by their grownups.  Spring is definitely coming.

And thank you to all of you who left such sweet comments about my last post on the loss of our dear Ophy.  I appreciate your love and support.  I’m slowly getting used to the idea that Ophy isn’t around anymore, and I keep reminding myself that she was terribly sick and ready to move on.  I’ve never had to make that decision before, and now I fully appreciate what our wonderful vet told me: while putting a beloved pet to sleep is very difficult, it is also one’s obligation as a caring pet owner to make that decision when the time comes.  And hopefully Ophy is cavorting in the great beyond with her best feline pal, Rudy.

Book groups, Children, Librarianship, Storytime

Still here…

Yes, I’m still here – but I’m finding that my still-healing broken foot is limiting my evening creativity.  While at work, I think of things that would be awesome blog post topics: a very young child who says or does something charming, a book group that takes the book discussion to a new level, an idea for a new program.  But I can’t write blog posts at work, and by the time I get home I’m a bit cooked, mentally and physically, after stumping around at the library all day with the walking boot on my foot.

So here’s a quick summary of what I’ve been up to for the last couple of weeks:

  • Lots of storytimes, which have been especially crowded now that the gloom of winter and cabin fever has set in for everyone.  Last week there were forty-one adults and kids at the Thursday storytime, which is about the limit of what we can fit into the story room.  But it’s such a nice group of attendees, all of whom participate enthusiastically.  There was a wonderful moment at one recent storytime where every single adult in the room was belting out (in harmony, of course!) “Where is Thumbkin?”.  Very very cool.
  • Lots of great book groups.  Of course I’ve waited too long to write up coherent retellings of each book group discussion, so I’ll just sum up each one quickly.  The 5th grade group read Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett, and eleven out of twelve kids disliked the book because it was “too slow.”  The teen book group read The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan, and while talking about what kind of book it is I discovered that most of the group had never heard of caviar, creme brulee, or Agatha Christie.  The 4th grade group discussed Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin, and they unanimously loved it.  (They were also happy to hear that a book they read earlier this year, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, was the winner of this year’s Newbery award.)  And the 6th grade group discussed Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick, which they mostly loved; it interested me that they were all surprised to find out that Brian Selznick both wrote and illustrated the book – the group members thought that he was only the author.
  • And then there are the random things: sweet moments at the art portion of the storytime for 4’s & 5’s (a five year old discovering that he can “erase” his painting and start fresh, thus prolonging the creative experience); an eighteen month old finding his dancing legs and grinning ecstatically while bobbing up and down to some Zydeco; two sweet girls at the Create a Valentine program surprising me with Valentine cards (one said “Feel Better!” and the other – launched at my back – was emblazoned with “Guess Who???”…the artist finally came over and told me she had made it, since I was clearly confused); and the daily niceties of working in a small town filled with caring people.

Hopefully my foot will be fully healed soon (eight weeks and counting right now, this is a loooooooong process), but until then please forgive me if I have lapses of blog entries.  I’m still here!