Fly Guy Party!

The kids in early elementary school in my library love the Fly Guy series by Tedd Arnold! So, I decided to create a program celebrating this fun character for kids in Kindergarten – 2nd grade.  With 22 kids signed up, I was hoping for a better turnout than the 10 that showed, but they were very enthusiastic and had a lot of fun!

The evening’s plans consisted of reading aloud Hi, Fly Guy! to familiarize anyone who hadn’t read the series.  Then, I also got the chance to read A Pet for Fly Guy, this book is not released until April, but I was able to get an ARC while I was at the ALA Midwinter Conference.  So I was able to explain to the kids that this book wasn’t even available yet, but we got to get a sneak peek and the kids were really excited. 

After the stories, our 10 Fly Guy fans made their own fly! I created a simple fly template with Microsoft Word.  They traced their handprints on the wax paper to make fly wings and decorated their fly.  Scissor skills seem to be something a lot of kids need additional practice with. So as often as I can, I try to include cutting as part of our craft. I have noticed in recent programs that scissor skills are something a lot of kids at this age need extra practice with, so I often include cutting things out as part of our craft.

After we created our own fly guys, the kids then got the chance to make their own housefly paper airplane. (The directions are from YouTube, not too hard to do, but I couldn’t find instructions anywhere else.)  This was a little difficult because of the number of steps involved. But, I found that it was a great project to encourage kids to try something new and not be afraid to fail.  I had a couple of kids tell me, “I can’t!” before even giving it a try.  So that was an opportunity for me to encourage trying something new, while still helping where I was needed.  Then, of course, we had to give our paper airplanes a few test flights – which was so much fun!