Passive Program Idea for Fall/Winter: Leaf Rubbing!

I recently did a craft program built around Anthony Browne’s Frida and Bear Play the Shape Game. If you haven’t seen this one, I highly recommend it. Frida and Bear alternate making pictures out of shapes, including shapes they draw and shapes they find in nature. For instance, they start with the shape in red, then draw in the rest to create a dog:

I read the book, then gave the kids shapes to base their art on. I also collected a bunch of leaves and twigs from the neighborhood behind our library so they could use those as a starting point as well.

This was my creation. Kids guesses of what it is: tree, stump, leaf. Clearly I have a future in the fine arts.

A couple of the kids made some cool stuff out of their shapes, but one of them really latched on to the nature theme and just wanted to make rubbings. He was having such a good time that he inspired my passive craft program for the Saturday after the Thanksgiving holiday.

I went for a walk over the holiday and picked up a lot of cool leaves and sticks from around my parents’ neighborhood. (Hooray for free supplies!) Then I picked out all of our naked crayons and put everything artfully on a table outside our kids’ room. I also left out an example.

I made a little sign in picmonkey, letting people know what it was all about:

If I had to change anything it would be to have some sort of direction about how to do a leaf rubbing. I guess I expected at least the caregivers to know how, but I had to show several people how to rub the crayon horizontally. By the end of the day there were leaves strewn about the table and floor, but it was an easy clean. For the minimal effort put in, this was a very satisfying passive program.

What kind of passive programs do you run? I want to hear about them!
- Angela Barratt @ COL

Programming Resource

Have you heard of programminglibrarian.org? It's a great resource for programming ideas for everyone from kids through older adults. You can filter your searches, or browse ideas limiting by cost (there are free program ideas!), library type, topic and program type. If, for some reason, you do not have a backup program idea for SRP, you should definitely check out this site, and find a backup program idea!

Check it out, and let us know if there are any cool programs you'd like to do at your library in the comments!

Easy Crafts for Kids

What will you do if your SRP performer doesn't show up? Do you have your plan B in place? Here's a website with some AWESOME easy craft ideas, and a lot of them don't require much more than paper! http://www.easypeasyandfun.com/ This is one of my favorite things right now:

I've made a frog puppet before using a similar technique, but I hadn't seen a shark puppet! This is a fairly simple craft that could work for multiple ages, so a great plan B if you need a quick program! Also, some of the activities could work as passive programs. Check out the site and let use know what crafts you are excited about trying at your location in the comments!

-Sara

Dramatic Play

Hello all!

Angela here. I had a lovely jaunt at Jungman but I am happy to be reunited with Collier’s kids room and the kids who fill it. One of the things I really missed was the Dramatic Play Elephant. We have this blue elephant that I think is supposed to hold books but it is really so much better at holding costumes and other dramatic play toys.

Those books are just begging to fall out. And VHS tapes!?

Look how perfectly the hats fit into the cubbies.

There are few things I love more than the amazing costume combos I see in Collier’s kids room: construction worker fairies, dinosaur princesses, firefighter doctors… so much imagination at play!

I don’t want to get too didactic here, but I do want to spotlight some of the early literacy benefits of Dramatic Play. Research has shown that more Dramatic Play is correlated with higher test scores, increased language ability, and development of critical thinking and social skills. And this research is all across socio-economic lines!

While researching for this blog post, I found this really cool breakdown of the kinds of play. Sara Smilansky was a researcher who divided play into four levels. All of them are important, but they do build on one another:

1. Functional: moving objects, practicing motor skills, and experiencing the immediate environment
2. Constructive: movement of objects in a non-random way, with a goal
3. Dramatic: “free, symbolic play in which the child explores relationships with the world (and others in that world)” (Furman 173)
4. Games with Rules: children accept and adjust to rules of play (could be an official game or a game with socially created rules)

You may be familiar with programs that celebrate all of these kinds of play! For instance, baby playtime will be mostly functional play, with some constructive. By age 2, kids are starting into Dramatic Play (think play food and magic wands).

Dramatic Play can involve acting out daily activities that children experience, activities seen or heard in stories, and creating new scenarios based on these experiences. With Dramatic Play, kids are practicing “symbolic representation — the ability to use one thing to represent another” (Furman). This helps reinforce the literacy concept of letters and words representing ideas.

In the Elephant, in addition to costumes that I have acquired from various sources (some were costumes that my siblings and I wore as children, and some came from the toys I found already here at the branch), we have: a baby doll, a plastic doctor’s kit, an old camera (with the batteries removed), and a hear-myself sound phone. If you would like to spend some of your $200 discretionary budget on dramatic play items, Lakeshore has a whole category! Or, take a look and get inspired to use some things you may already have at your branch.

If it is not feasible to leave Dramatic Play materials out on the floor of your library, consider using them in a program! You could have dramatic playtime or bring some hats to a hat-themed storytime. Dramatic Play does not have to involve props or costumes. It could be as simple as: “let’s all get on our horse and gallop around the room!,” or “Flap your wings because today we are birds”! But the benefits are far from simple.

Cited:
Bennett-Armistead, V. Susan. "What Is Dramatic Play and How Does It Support Literacy Development in Preschool?" Scholastic.

Furman, Lou. “In Support of Drama in Early Childhood Education, Again.” Early Childhood Education Journal, Vol. 27, No. 3, 2000

Origami Boxes

Paper crafts are one of my favorite things to do  with my kids at home. You can create this box and lid  to be a card that opens out when the lid is removed. Or you can glue or hot glue the flaps to the inside of the box and have a nice sturdy little box. The box template can be printed out on 8.5x11 paper and the box itself measures about 2 inches tall when it's completed.

 I've included the instructions for both the box and the box lid above the templates for cutting out. The nice thing about that is  you can print these out and the teens or (elementary age kids)  have the instructions with pictures right in front of them so they can follow along as you all do the craft together or try it on their own. I recommend using cardstock and not regular paper. It makes for a sturdier project.

Once the box is done, they can decorate it as they like. I used heavy card stock and paper flowers in the photos you see here. But the possibilities are endless.

This could make a great card or gift  for Mother's Day or even Father's day (with the right paper choices--comic book pages glued onto cardstock?)

For anyone who replies in the comments section, I'll create a box similar to the one pictured (but with different themes and paper) so you have a sample of your own. Don't forget to put your name and location! I'll get your little boxes to you at the next Youth Services Meeting in March. 

-Michelle Johnson

If you want to conserve paper and print out the box and lid on the same page, here’s the template for that. It’s a slightly smaller box (2 inches instead of 2 ½ inches) but is a nice alternative when doing this for a larger group.

Passive Program: Vote for Cat of the Year!

Here's my contribution to Citizenship Month and Election day - a chance to vote!

To keep things friendly, I’ve created campaign posters for Bad Kitty, Pete the Cat, Garfield, and Splat the Cat. I did the posters using Photoshop to create the original image and enlarged them using a site called Rasterbator.com. This site is amazing! It takes your image and enlarges it to make it as big as you want. And it’s free! These posters are downloaded as a PDF in four pieces. I manually pieced the four pieces together and glued them onto poster board.

If you want to replicate this as a passive program at your location, I am happy to share the PDFs with you. Just email me! And please cast YOUR vote for your favorite cat! You can do an “Absentee Ballot” comment on the blog and I’ll put a dot under the poster of your favorite cat. Or you can vote in person at the Youth Services meeting on Friday!

I did broaden my voting population by posting this photo on FB and offering the absentee ballot option as part of the post. With all the political tension on social media, a fun election like this couldn’t hurt!

- Michelle @ CEN

Why is Pusheen not a choice?!

Passive Program: Free Draw Table

“I love the Libery” “Well I love it more” “I super love the libery more than anyone”

One of my favorite things in our kids’ room here at Collier is the Free Draw Table. We wrap one of the tables with brown butcher paper and let them go at it! I use masking tape to hold it down; it’s out of sight underneath the table.

Nothing quite rivals the sense of potential a fresh Free Draw Table inspires

At one point, I thought it would be clever to flip over the used side and get double use out of each paper, but I soon realized that this leads to the crayon getting rubbed into the table. So I don’t recommend it (it’s best to keep the janitorial staff on your side!).

I have found that designating a table for coloring has really cut down on the crayon marks that show up elsewhere in the kids’ room.

Some of my favorites

I used to try to keep nice whole crayons out in the bin, but that was a losing battle. And they’ll color with whatever’s out there. Also, I have an excellent pencil cup made out of an empty car-cupholder Kleenex box. I put a label sticker over the bottom where it says the brand name. It now says “Story writing tools!” I have an extra, and I will send it to the first person to comment on this post with their name and Branch initials!

A good pictorial representation of the chaos that is summer at the library.

- Angela @ COL

Early Literacy Boxes

If you are interested in making Early Literacy Boxes like they have at Collier, you can find the templates here: Early Literacy Box Templates

Feel free to copy them and make some boxes at your location, or create your own!

Remember: Play is one of the 5 Early Literacy Skills that kids need to develop, so let's make sure we have something in our libraries available for kids to play with!

-Sara