Penguins!

Welcome back to storytime! After quite a break, I am back! It is great do have storytime again, I always forget how much fun it is.

I debated long and hard about what to do this week, I wanted something super fun. I decided that since it is still winter, I wanted to do a cold theme and penguins seemed perfect. Who can resist these cuties?? Not me!

The first book we read today was 365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental illustrated by Joëlle Jolivet.

This is an incredibly awesome book about a family that mysteriously receives a penguin every in the mail and is forced to take care of all of them. It is humorous and fun to read but also very informational because it mathematical concepts and touches on environmental concerns. The illustration are fantastic and extremely fun to look at.

The next book was Cuddly Duddley by Jez Alborough.

This is a very sweet book about a penguin, Duddley, who is so cuddly that everyone wants to cuddle him which is very frustrating for him. The rhyming text makes this book a joy to read aloud and the children all agreed they would be just as frustrated as Duddley if everyone wanted to cuddle them too.

Next we read Penguin Pete by Marcus Pfister.

This is a board book, so I was initially worried about how well it would work for storytime. Luckily, there was not a large group this week so everyone was able to see. Pete is a very sweet penguin who wants to fly like his chick friends but as he is a penguin, he cannot. Luckily, he makes some penguin friends who show him how fun it is to swim in the water.

Finally, we finished with Penguin Dreams by V.L. Walsh illustrated by J. Otto Seibold.

I am fan of this duo’s work,Vunce Upon A Time, is a great Halloween book and Penguin Dreams is just as much fun to read. It is all about a penguin who has some crazy dreams. When we finished this book, we had a short discussion about our craziest dreams.

Finding a craft this week was a bit of a challenge. We ended up making Styrofoam cup penguins.

I found this great craft here: http://www.freekidscrafts.com/styrofoam_cup_penguin-e193.html

This was a surprisingly easy craft for the children to complete and I think it was extra fun for them because it gave them free reign of the Scotch tape which is always very exciting because that rarely happens.

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Humpty-Dumpty

This week I started a brand new nursery rhyme program in my library. I got the idea from one of my classmates in my library school classes. For one of our assignments, we had to think of a program for children or young adults that we could implement in our library. This was one of my favorite assignments for the class because I was able to hear all of the great ideas from my peers.

This is going to be a monthly program for the youngest of our patrons. My reasoning for this program is two fold: I have found that many of the children who use my library are not familiar with nursery rhymes and we have need for new programs geared for pre-school age children. Additionally, nursery rhymes are a great way to impact and support early literacy and I think that a lot of our kids can benefit from this.

We did a lot of things during this program but most importantly, I made my own flannel board…. which is really the reason for this post. Normally, I am not so egotistical and would post a blog all about a flannel board that made, but I am very proud of it. It took much longer to make than anticipated.

 

Storytime starts up again January 27 and I am currently in the planning stages. I can’t wait to share what we do!