Monday, February 10, 2014

Storytimes and More Saturday Share: February 8, 2014

***My sincere apologies for the lateness of this Saturday Share post. 
The internet was not cooperating around my house this weekend...


HAPPY 
(almost) 
Valentine's 
Day!

This week's Storytime's and More Saturday Share is chock full of wonderful Valentines ideas, as well as lots of book-related happenings that are exciting and fun to read about! 

While pulling together all the shares, I was reminded of this book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal:


Each share has the potential to become something bigger ~ something so much more ~ as it becomes a part of each of us ~ as we all tweak it in our own way to share with those around us.  I love that! And I hope you do, too! 

So... once again, I have to give a tremendous "Thank you!" to everyone who took the time to share this week.  YOU are the ones who have made this adventure such a success and so much fun to be a part of each weekend!

From one little kiss... endless bliss!

Enjoy!


~ Amazing Activities Shares ~

Carrie, our Google-ing Guru, has a new share! She enjoys giving healthy, but fun items to her little friends on holidays so she Google-ed "healthy Valentine snacks" and found this blog post, How to: Healthy Valentine Treats to Give Away, which shares 7 ~ yes, 7! ~ healthy and inexpensive ideas. Carrie especially likes the "Let's Stick Together, Valentine!" one since cheese sticks are one of her favorite snacks!
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Pam, a former preschool teacher who is now a stay-at-home mom, is sharing a learning activity that involves most ~if not all ~ of our senses. It is Painting with Flower Petals! Pam found the activity on the blog, Fantastic Fun and Learning, but she used to do this activity with her 5 year olds when they were studying a 5 senses unit. Pam always brought in pots of several different kinds of flowers. Then she and her students "used their eyes to describe the flowers before picking them; their sense of touch as they crushed the petals to paint with them; their nose to smell the different scents when they crushed them against the paper; and most of the children even tasted the edible ones!" Sounds like a very interactive learning activity with lots of opportunity for unusual explorations!
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JacksNana recently started playing Tic-Tac-Toe with her grandson, Jack, who can't get enough of the game. Imagine her delight when she came across a blog post about making an XOXO Valentine Tic-Tac-Toe game! She immediately started making plans with her husband to create a similar game for Jack. They hope to have theirs ready for a lively game of Tic-Tac-Toe when Jack arrives at their house on Valentine's Day. How fun! I look forward to hearing about Jack's surprise over such a special gift!
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 Travis is sharing a creative way to catch the attention of the toddlers in her Baby Storytime. She says, "I reach into my storytime apron and pull out a pitch pipe bell with a striker. The kids are mesmerized by the sound of the clear bell when I strike it, and we all sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It's the only thing I've found that stops everyone in the room. I envy you ukelele players!"
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For my share, I am presenting a Blast from the Past with some H-E-A-R-T-felt Songs. A Blast from the Past is just an old post from some time ago but it still has lots of fun Valentine songs that were very easy to flannel-ize. The felt sets are very versatile and can be used for many different learning activities. Enjoy!
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~ Creative Crafting Shares ~

Elena, a first grade teacher, is back again this week to share an unusual Valentine craft idea that she got from another first grade teacher's blog, First Grade Learning Stars. Elena mentioned that she loves the idea that each heart is BIG and that each student makes one for another student so they all have a beautiful, one-of-a-kind poster to take home for Valentine's Day.                                                           What a fun idea!
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A warm "welcome back" to Molly, a homeschooling mom of 4. This week, Molly is also sharing an idea for Valentine's Day learning and crafting fun ~ "I Feel Love When...". While this is a craft, Molly mentioned that she actually chose it for "the focus on learning about love and good character".  As the mom of four young children, Molly is always searching for age-appropriate ways to teach about good character and she feels that this craft/activity is perfect for the lesson and for the crafting fun.
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~ Fun Facebook Shares ~

From our Facebook group ~ which you can find at Storytimes and More On the Go ~ we have a resource share by Sara. She shared a link to a new children's book award, the CLEL Bell Picture Book Award, which is "an annual recognition of five high-quality picture books that provide excellent support of early literacy development in young children." The 2014 Winners were announced on February 5, 2014. Be sure to check them out!
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~ P-interesting Shares ~

Lisa's share this week is another unusual Valentine craft that she came across on Pinterest. It is a String Art Heart! Lisa is planning to make this creative art project with her afterschool group on Friday because it is a smaller, older group. She usually has 5 to 6 kids who are 4th and 5th graders. She feels that they will be able to handle the nails with a little extra supervision.  Plus they love doing "totally rad" crafts!
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 I hope Lisa will share her group's experience with us because I love this idea!
But I need a little bit more courage to try it with a group of youngsters.

Claire, Mom to Zoe, brings us another pin from Pinterest. Her daughter, Zoe, has so much fun last week learning about groundhogs that she asked to learn more about other hibernating animals. Here is Zoe and Mom's adorable Pinterest find ~ a hibernating bear cave! 
"And it is portable, too!"
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This week's list of Pinterest Accounts to follow:










Donna's library ~ Kenosha Public Library ~ http://www.pinterest.com/mykpl/



Chantelle's Library ~ Cockburn Library ~ http://www.pinterest.com/cockburnlibrary/







~ Spectacular Storytime Shares ~

One of our group members ~ Thrive Thursday ~ has a wonderful monthly round-up of school age programming ideas on her blog, Thrive After Three. Her Thrive Thursday Round-up of cool ideas is very similar to our Saturday Share posts in that there is a wide variety of ideas shared by many different people. It is a wonderful resource for anyone looking for program ideas for older kids!
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Be sure to join in on the next Thrive Thursday Round-up 
with your own school age program ideas!

Last week, Ann, provided us with a helpful resource for starting a Yoga Storytime. While continuing her research on this new programming style, she came across an on-line article, Classroom Yoga Helps Improve Behavior of Kids with Autism, which she found interesting. She highly recommends that you read through the comments for "a more interesting discussion" on a topic that she herself was "unaware of being so controversial in nature."
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Even though Anne's storytimes got cancelled this week due to Winter Storm Nika, she turned her plans into "a suggestion to try some of these ideas at home". On her blog, itsybitsymom, she shared her plans for an Olympic-themed storytime which includes several book suggestions and some fun ideas for "events" that will allow you to have some sporting fun at home or at your library program. 
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Sara from the blog, Bryce Don't Play, is sharing her second grade outreach program ~ Robots vs. Aiens! Sounds exciting, doesn't it? I know my 4 boys would have loved this type of introduction to the Library in second grade. 
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We have a new friend sharing with us for the first time this week. A warm welcome to kjoshi1242! She is sharing a "Winter storytime featuring Snowballs and The Mitten, and shaving cream and glue puffy paint." What a fun combination!
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Carrie from The Lion is a Bookworm is back again this week with her storytime ~ O is for Olympics. I love seeing the similarities and the differences in all of these awesome Olympic-themed programs! Carrie has several active things like marching and a snowball ring toss. I will certainly be "stealing" some of these fantastic ideas for my own upcoming Olympic events!
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Also sharing a storytime is Chantelle from Kids @ Cockburn Libraries. Chantelle's theme this week was Silly with an elephant or two thrown in for some good fun!



~ Terrific Twitter Shares ~

Kelsey (@LibraryBonanza), one of our Twitter followers, shared this tweet:
"Fairy tales can be a great way to talk about tough issues. I present The Ugly Duckling during storytime: http://librarybonanza.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/the-ugly-duckling/http://"
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I would like to share a tweet from one the people that I follow on Twitter ~ @MrsBTodd. 
She tweeted, "USA #Flannel Map, worth the work! #tlchat#edchat http://lessordinarylibrarian.blogspot.com/2014/02/labor-of-love.html" 
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Beautiful!
I would LOVE to have a felt map like this one for my library friends to explore and play with!

This week's list of Twitter Accounts to follow:
(Just click on the name to be taken to the person's account.) 
Remember  ~ before following someone on Twitter, it is always best to read through some of their tweets.)

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~ Wonderful Website Shares ~

Missy is sharing an article for getting older children involved in volunteer work. She feels that "volunteering should be a major part of everyone's life because it brings with it such beautiful feelings of accomplishment and joy." She recently started looking for volunteer opportunities for her own family and came across the Care.com website and this particle article, 6 Tips For Getting Your Kids to Volunteer. She especially found the last 3 suggestions helpful with her own children. "Volunteering is a good thing!"
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Jennifer, of Jean Little Library fame, has "a new blog series - RA RA READ". It is the reader's advisory and read-alikes that she distributes to her staff every week. This should be helpful to anyone who has ever wondered what book to read after finshing a Rick Riordan book or what books are there that would be good to recommend to a child who likes the Animal Ark series. I am definitely bookmarking this new resource and I recommend that you do, too!
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***If you enjoyed this share post, I hope you will consider joining in the sharing fun on Saturdays in the near future. The more people who share, the more resources we will all be aware of!


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