Storytimes and More Saturday Share for 1/4/14 ~ Our Very First Share!

HAPPY 2014

and
welcome to our very first

Saturday Share!

We are very excited to be starting a new way for our group to share resources each week! 

We hope you enjoy our first SMSShare!

In hopes of making the shared items easier to access later, we will be organizing the shares into several different topics. To that end, we have the Craft ideas under the label:

~ Creative Crafting Shares ~

Our first share this week comes from Lisa. She is bringing us a "quick easy snowman craft" that she will be doing next week with her afterschool crowd. 

It's a Paper Plate Snowman with a twist! 

This looks like a lot of fun with plenty of opportunity for the kids to be creative while decorating their own individual snowmen. Thank you for sharing such an easy-to-prep craft this week, Lisa!

Next, we have two shares found on Pinterest that we will call:

~ P-interesting Shares ~

From Mom to Zoe, we have a link to a post about how-to-build a simple 

Shadow Puppet Theater! 

Mom to Zoe is a stay-at-home mom who enjoys finding new things to do with her young daughter. She plans to make a shadow puppet theater and wondered if this is a project that would be good for libraries. My answer is "Absolutely!". What an exciting way to encourage families to retell a book that they have just read together! I hope anyone who uses this idea will come back and share pictures and experiences with us. Thank you, Mom to Zoe, for bringing this to our attention this week.

Our second P-interesting idea is from Miss Sue who says she "just saw THIS on Pinterest" and wonders if she has time to make it for a Valentine's Day storytime.

Isn't this an adorable little Mailbag?

Plus it has "working envelopes"!

I'm adding this to the very top of my TBM (to be made) pile. Sue, it is perfect for a Valentine's Day program and you should definitely "go for it!". (Be sure and share pictures with us once you have it made.) Thank you for sharing this week!

This week we also have some Storytime ideas that we will label:

~ Spectacular Storytime Shares ~

From Thrive After Three we have an interesting discussion on repetition in storytimes. The discussion is based around Candace Fleming's book, Oh, No!, and the post includes a video of a puppet version of the book.

I'm sure you will want to click on over and join in the discussion about an important ~ but often overlooked ~ aspect of storytimes.

Miss Sue from the blog, Library Village, is bringing us a second share this week. She is sharing an idea that we have discussed on our group's Facebook page. It is a story-themed Flash Mob! 

Miss Sue presents Caps for Sale with props!

This is such a fun idea and I love those tiny little caps! Miss Sue includes a link to her Monkey Themed Storytime, as well. It is definitely worth the time to click on over to her blog!

My share this week is a Blast from the Past on my blog, Storytime ABC'S,  because I love January and Wintertime and the opportunity to share snow-related books and snow-filled learning activities. I include several ways to use felt or paper snowflakes for early literacy fun. 

Plus, there is a link to a template which will make creating your own snowflakes very simple to do. Enjoy!

Our last category for our shares this week is all about useful websites. We will call this category:

~ Wonderful Website Shares ~

The first share in this category is the Spaghetti Book Club ~ it is a book review site featuring reviews written by kids! 

This inspiring share is from Ann, a librarian from California. She says this site has been a helpful resource for her during Summer Reading when parents and teachers are looking for ways to help their children/students connect with the books they are reading. Ann has only used the site for reading the book reviews but, apparently, it is a full program that can be used by classrooms, libraries, etc for teaching children how to write and illustrate quality book reviews. That portion of the site has a cost but the actual reviews are free! I personally love that there is a list of participating schools so you can see if there is one near you. And there is also a list of schools from other countries! How fun would it be to do a "reading Around the World" program? You could include the book reviews written by children from different states and countries. Thank you, Ann, for sharing this unusual link. I plan to use it with my school-age library friends and to share it with my teacher friends.

Another wonderful website is being shared by Elena who is a 1st grade teacher.She has been searching for fun ideas to use with her kids on the topic of the Winter Olympics. She says if she had her own blog she would write a review about a cute book she found that is perfect for this unit. It is:

Olympig by Victoria Jamieson

Besides being a "spirited, sporty romp" about competing, this book is also about losing gracefully. The kids will laugh and cheer for Olympig through all his competitions. 

Elena has included a website in her share. It belongs to the author, Victoria Jamieson, and it provides lots of fun ideas for planning your own kid-sized Olympics for the kids in your life. The suggestions take you all the way from the opening ceremonies to the awarding of medals. There is even a template for making your own medals!

Thanks for the timely share, Elena!

A huge "Thank you!" to

 everyone who shared this first week!

We will be back again next week with our 2nd Storytimes and More Saturday Share.

So start planning now for what YOU would like to share!

The link-up post will be available on Thursday morning so you will have plenty of time to share your post or interesting "find" before Saturday at Noon EST.

Enjoy your weekend!