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Robot Building – Part 1
I’m not sure that anyone who isn’t a children’s librarian understands the feelings of being smack in the middle of summer reading with programs happening on a daily (sometimes hourly) schedule, reference questions flying at you a mile a minute, and kids and parents, nannies, grandparents, and tutors in every…
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Fun Friday: Extreme Animals
We had a great time at our Fun Friday program yesterday, 22 kids from 1st – 4th grade came to the library to learn about animals, camouflage and to use their imaginations to create their own extreme animal. We began with finding camouflaged animals in the book, Where in the…
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What’s Black and White and Read All Over?
I’m over at the ALSC blog today posting about a great program I did with middle school students. It’s a simple program involving old newspapers, some scissors, glue and scrap paper… and of course some imagination!
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“Imagination: The Forgotten 21st Century Skill?”
While I was contemplating what to write about today, an article about imagination just popped up on Twitter feed – and there was my answer! “Imagination: The Forgotten 21st Century Skill?” was posted on the Scholastic website by Brian Smith, a kindergarten teacher. In the article, Brian Smith notes that…
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Storytime Theme: Imagination Station
This is the second Saturday storytime I’ve tried this fall and it’s great to see some regular faces, but also some new faces who can’t come in during the week! I had about 20 kids show up which worked really well and before we began I explained to parents the…
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Neil Gaiman on Libraries
Neil Gaiman, popular author of Coraline, recently had a lecture published on the importance imagination, public libraries and daydreaming is vital to our future. Definitely take the time to read the full lecture, posted on The Guardian’s website. This lecture that Gaiman presented, is in essence, a love letter to…
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The First Drawing
All I can say is… where was this book during the Summer Reading Program, it would have been perfect for the theme! But nonetheless, this was a very interesting and accessible story about art history for young children. My brother is an archeologist and in my mind he’s Indiana Jones and I…
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Wacky Wednesday Book Discussion #2 (3rd & 4th graders)
Our second book discussion for 3rd and 4th graders happened this afternoon. If you missed out on the first one I did, check out the link here. I had 15 kids participate with all of them actually reading the book. For this book discussion, I chose Frankie Pickle and the Closet…
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Press Here
Press Here by Herve Tullet is an amazing book that works well both one-on-one as well as with a group. I actually used this book for a story time with some trepidation, worrying if all the toddlers would rush towards me wanting to “press here.” But instead, we got a wonderfully…