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Picture Books that Spark Imagination
Where’s Walrus? by Stephen Savage Press Here by Herve Tullet Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson Journey by Aaron Becker Chalk by Bill Thomson Skippyjon Jones by Judy Shachner This is Sadie by Sara O’Leary Not a Box by Antoinette Portis The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires Higher! Higher! by Leslie…
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Lego Block Party – One of the Easiest Programs You Can Do
We don’t have a dedicated Lego Club, but we bust out our Legos, especially when the kids don’t have school. We’ve tried different approaches – themes, no themes, read alouds, games, etc. And I really enjoy dumping the Legos on the floor and letting the kids go to town. A…
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Toddler Storytime Theme: Imagination & Pretend Play
One of my most viewed posts is my Imagination Station storytime theme, so I decided to give the people what they want and did another storytime theme this week about imagination and pretend play. These are some of my most favorite themes because the research shows (and I strongly believe)…
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Sunday Storytime Challenge #2
I’ve done a couple of wordless picture books in my storytime so to varying degrees of success. I think by far my most effective wordless picture book in storytime was Where’s Walrus? by Stephen Savage. The kids adore helping me and the zookeeper find the escaped walrus from the…
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Mythology for Grades K – 2 and 3 -4
Today I did a very quick program for children entering Kindergarten – 2nd grade in the fall. I read aloud “Bellerophon and the Flying Horse” and “Theseus and the Minotaur” in Usborne Greek Myths for Young Children by Heather Amery. This group of myths are written for younger children and are…
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Fun Friday: Homemade Playdough
Program Idea: Our Fun Friday program has been running for the past two years, and I’m beginning to find it difficult to decide on themes or ideas to explore. The wide age-range of the kids (grades 1 – 4) sometimes makes it difficult to plan programs, plus its only 45…
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Book Review: Dory Fantasmagory
“Fantasmagory: a dream-like state where real life and imagination are blurred together” – a perfect start to a book that does exactly that – blur the line between reality and imagination and it’s exactly what kids need! Everyone calls Dory “Rascal” – she’s the youngest in her family and her…
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The Nowhere Box
This book grabbed my attention right away – the cut-out, painted, and pencil sketched drawings fit perfectly with the story about a little boy frustrated by his even littler brothers always getting in the way of his fun. So, he decides to go Nowhere in a washing machine box and…
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Summer Camp Outreach – Shrinky Dinks
This week at summer camp we made Shrinky Dinks! If you’re unfamiliar with Shrinky Dinks you can get Shrinky Dink paper from Amazon. It’s basically a sheet of plastic that can be decorated using colored pencils and shrinks when you put it in the oven (or in our case –…
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Robot Building – Part 2
I survived our robot building workshop this afternoon! It was a lot of controlled chaos, but I think the kids and many of the parents had a really great time building, exploring, imagining, and just having a really great time together. We ended up with over 100 people for this…
