Pranks

It's always been my private dream to become the office prankster. Wreaking a small amount of havoc and shenanigans in the workplace. Passivise aggressively annoying the co-workers who always annoy me in return.

But I'm not clever enough to do that and not get fired.
April Fools day in coming up and it's another chance to incorporate a passive seek and find program at your library.

Using the power of observation, patrons are asked to find at least 3 silly things in the library.

Here are some of the idea my coworkers and I came up with....

Upside down posters
Goofy faces/Smiley faces places in the library
Re-label subject heading signs  Gross Body Parts= Health 612's   Long Ago = History
A book on toilets or potty training that has been "TP'd"
Googly eyes or Cartoon eyes on poster or protraits
Plastic goldfish in a bowl near books about aquariums
Section of books with spines facing the wrong way or upside down
Re-label office signs- From the Harmless (Minstry of Silly Walks) to the bold. I want to add "Of Farts" under the sign Administrative Office but I might chicken out because our director seriously lacks a sense of humor
If you have puppet or stuffed animals decorating your area, put sunglasses, hats, or headphones on them.
Have the staff members wear a silly hat or put a on a name tag with a clearly made up name (Yoda, Humpty Dumpty, Burt Macklin, FBI)
Have a upside down bowl out with a sign "Don't move the bowl unless you plan to kill what is under it!"
Places mirrors with signs that read "Mirror under repair, do not use!"
Plastic bats, bugs, or spider rings stuck to the windows
Cut out some Ellison Die "E" in brown paper. Place at a service desk with a sign reading "Free Brownies"

My cunning idea for a prize would be to tell the kids they get a tattoo for playing. Then ask them to roll up their sleeves while I change the needle of of my tattoo gun. Laugh and say "Just Kiddding!" and let them pick out a temporary tattoo.

Yeah, we'll see how many get that joke.....

Storytime From the Liberry: Ducktales

How to do a storytime about ducks at your library

Step 1: Call it Ducktales
Step 2: Gather your books and supplies.
Step 3: Play the theme from Ducktales before your storytime starts. Watch as the parents listen and chuckle at your joke. Shout "Woohoo!" Enjoy your storytime
Step 4: If no one laughs or notices, take bittersweet comfort in know you are the coolest person in the room.

I've done this storytime two year ago, and the parents just thought my pun was a riot. Fast forward to the present, with most of the caregivers' noses are glue to their phones and oblivious to all, my "comic genius" falls on deaf ears. Sigh. Oh well let's read some books about ducks!

Opening Song: The Wheels on the Bus

Welcome: My usually spiel with my penguin puppet helper. Afterward I made him say quack. "Quack? Do penguins say quack, friends? What bird says quack?"

Book: Swim Duck Swim by Susie Lurie- A sweet story in rhyme with accompanying photos of one adorable duckling.

Song: All the Little Ducklings

Book: A book of Babies by Il Sung Na -One of my personal favorite authors. Great book about baby animals, eggs and perfect for the start of spring.

Song: Ten Little Ducklings
I made ten flannel silhouettes of rubber ducks so we could practice counting before we started. They lasted all of ten seconds before some sticky toddler fingers made off with them. But at least the flannel pieces got their attention so that we could all stand up and do the song together.

Tune: Ten Little Indians
One little, two little, three little ducklings
Four little, five little, six little ducklings
Seven little, eight little, nine little ducklings
Ten ducklings in the pond.

Extra Verses- Quack quack quack, quack, quack little ducklings....
Swim, swim, swim, swim, swim little ducklings





Book: Tickle the Duck by Ethan Long- If your kids and grownups aren't giggling at the end of this book, check their pulse because they might be dead.

Dancing Song: Shake Your Sillies Out

Book: Five Little Ducks by Ivan Bates (Illustrator)- The best part of being your own storytime boss is you can make your own rules. The version of this song that I remember (and most of my group seems familiar with ) doesn't fit with the words in this book. So I sang the version I was comfortable with so I wouldn't get flustered with my words.



Way back in the day, when I was in middle school, I recall vividly going to the elementary school across the street to help read to the kids. The extra challenge was this was a school that had a large population of handicapped students, and the group I read to were mostly confined to wheelchairs and had serious developmental delays. This situation might strike fear in the heart of adult librarians, but I was a blissfully ignorant  6th grade kid who knew nothing about that. I knew how to read stories. I knew I should hold the book out to face the kids and turn it so everyone could see the pictures. I wasn't nervous if the my audience understood me or not. I guess one could call this the cockiness of youth.

The first book I read was a Ducktales book. I don't recall the title but it was a standard Golden Book format cranked out due to the popularity of cartoon show. It was way too long to be read out loud, but I wasn't given a choice in my material to read. I read for another 30 minutes, picking up one book after another. After I was done I was thanked by the teachers and I felt great...and not just because my volunteer work had excused me from class.

I was the oldest child in my family. I read books to my little brother and sister. I read out loud to my stuffed animals. But my first public performance of a storytime was in 6th grade.

And the book was Ducktales.

Woohoo!

Go Green Week: Passive Program for St. Patricks' Day

Recently at my library, most of us have embraced the idea of passive programming or unprogramming as Tiny Tips for Library Fun calls it! We have had a more successful turn out with all day activities that families can do at their leisure. My Frozen program last January was this format and we also had a similar program on January 31 that we called a Caledcott Celebration.

We also had a good share of snow days and we've turn those dreary days into 3 successful calamity day passives programs for kids and grown-ups with cabin fever. They included showing a movie and pairing it with activities.

Needless to say, we got the memo from our boss saying "Let keep doing programs this way." Let's not stress on weekly clubs and activities with sign ups that no one comes to. Or crazy popular programs with long wait lists and many no shows.

I will say these types of programs are much less stressful to me. I look forward to planning them versus being stuck in rotation to do a school-age program and feeling like it was more of a chore. I volunteered to do more of these in the spring when we sat down to discuss our program schedule.

Sorry do I sound too giddy about it?

Well it's a rainy Saturday here at the library and the two kids in my department right now are being tutored (lame!) In case anyone wants to stop by for all day fun, these are my offerings.

Rainbow Necklace Craft.
I pre-cut a bunch of shamrocks from green foam and punched a hole in them. Kids can string them on a necklace and use rainbow beads to decorate them...with a twist! The beads are Fruit Loops!

Sensory Bin
A very popular option at our library.

 

Before Picture: St. Patrick's Day bin. Rainbow rice, green buttons and gem and some odds and ends from the Dollar Tree

Dollar Tree Haul- Foam Shamrocks, fake gold coins, green gems, and yes, shot glasses 
(Shhh! They make great scoopers for little hands). Cost $4

After Picture!

Treasure Hunt
Time to recycle another scavenger hunt!  This time the kids have to find the objects and the hidden words inside them to spell out the message. 

"Leprechauns are sneaky but children are sneakier! We can trust them because....."

(They are always after me Lucky Charms)

Feel free to borrow any idea you have seen on this blog for your library or school programs! May they all be successful!

Go Green Week: Storytime-The Color Green

I had two very energetic sessions of toddler storytime yesterday. It was one of the those times it was hard to tell who is more excited about storytime; me or the kids.

This was a new storytime for me I hadn't tried before, talking all about the color green.
I used my "flannel" props from this post here to get the kids talking about what they see in their world. Thankfully, we finally have a hint of spring weather so we could look outside and actually see green grass instead of snow. Plus I get to read some of my favorite books!

Opening Song: Wheels on the Bus

Welcome: Talking about green in our world
Grass and flowers are green; spring is coming. Shamrocks are green. It’s St. Patrick’s day soon. Having a green thumb means you are a good gardener. Lots of animals are green especially frogs, lizards, and snakes, Lots of green food is good for you like lettuce, spinach, avocados and peas!

Book: Bear Sees Colors by Karma Wilson- Be still my heart. Could this be a possible replacement for Brown Bear Brown Bear? I think so!

Song: Five Little Leprechauns 

Book: Little Pea by Amy Krouse Rosenthal - I love this book and it always gets me and the grown ups giggling. I always look for an opportunity to read it. Little Pea loves being a pea, except for dinner time. Because when your a pea, you have to eat candy for dinner and Little Pea hates candy!

Song: Freeze Dance Song - Green Light Go by the Not-Its
This works great because the command for stopping is built into the song, so no need to awkwardly reach behind and stop a CD to signal it's time for freeze. I had a sign with Go in Green and Stop in Red that we used to to help the kids. I also gave them a choice. They can get up and dance with me or they can just watch me dance like a fool for the next two minutes. Thankfully they joined with me.

Book: The Wide Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner- Another one of my all time favorites. Obviously, the key in reading this out loud is not to just rely on the pop ups. Open your mouth real wide and speak slowly. Be as comical as possible.

Dancing Song: Shake Your Sillies Out

Book: Green by Laura Seeger 

Closing Song: Wheels on the Bus

I gave my kids the assignment to go and find something green this week and tell their grown ups about it.  As an added bonus, lots of the books I pulled to be checked out after storytime went out! 

Go Green Week: A Song for St. Patrick's Day

It's Tuesday time for our second installment of "GO GREEN WEEK"

How do you present songs at your library programs?

Do you have a projector?
An ipod?
A Smartboard!!!

If you are me, you have don't have any of these things! :(

Low-tech is a nice way to describing my storytime set up (and our library for that matter) I used to hand out little storytime booklets with all our songs and books we read.  But it's hard to wrangle a toddler, read and sing at the same time. To not waste any more paper, I ditched them.

I make big song sheets instead. I don't even have one of those nice stands to hang them one, so they rest on the back of my big book stand supported by some cardboard. When you don't have the resources I guess you have to make up for it with pluck!

The song Five Little Leprechauns cam from this awesome post over at Literary Hoots
It's a "Five Little Piggy" song so it has appeal for a wide variety of ages not just babies and toddlers.
The clip art comes from Phillip Martin's site. There is tons of free clip art for all sorts of subjects.

Coming up tomorrow: The Color Green Storytime

Go Green Week: Talking about Green

I've always treated St. Patrick's day as a pseudo holiday. I don't get worked up about it. Since St. Patrick's day is on a Tuesday this year, a night I work the PM shift @ the liberry and then "clopen" the next day to do storytime, I'm probably not going to be going hog wild in celebrating it.
I get to order Shamrock shakes this time of year and that's all that concerns me.

So how is it I ended up with two St. Patrick's Day theme programs this week? Beats me. But I'm actually really excited about these program than I am about the actual holiday. It's also one of the safe/some what non sacred holidays that usually people don't get up in arms about their kids celebrating.

All this week I'm presenting "GO GREEN WEEK" to help they rest of you out in library land to get excited about celebrating St. Patrick's Day at your location.

My storytime theme for the week is "The Color Green" and our Ready to Read skill is Talking.
I work with toddlers so I often have to do the leading in on conversations. I made some visual aids to help me.

"Spring is coming. We are finally going to see grass! Grass is green. The steams and leaves on flowers are also green. If someone says you have a green thumb, that means you are very good at gardening"

"Many animals are green, especially lizards, frogs and snakes"

"Lots of the food we eat is green. Healthy food like lettuce, broccoli, peas and avocados"

"Shamrocks are green and St. Patrick's Day is coming up soon"

I referenced some photos on the internet and drew up my own pictures  (except the shamrock)so they would be small enough for my flannel board. I use the flannel board in the beginning of storytime and bring it out afterwards so the kids can have a closer look.

With older groups, there is a ton of more green things to talk about which is a great way of showing kids (and parents) an example of a conversation starter to help promote early literacy and learning. Green in foods, Green in Nature, Green in animals, Green in signs or logos...you get the picture.

Don't forget the Hulk, he is green too!

So here's my first post kicking off  "GO GREEN WEEK" Feel free to borrow any ideas you see here on this blog for your library programs. If you could, give me a link back or feature me on your blog, I would totally appreciate it. (Plus you would be an awesome human being)

Next Up: A Song for St. Patrick's Day

Best Books I Read: Feburary

So I have something more to talk about than storytime, I'm highlighting my favorite reads every month.

The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat

Hipster moment...thought this book was cool before it won and award. Like other in library land, I read through a selection of Caldecott hopefuls before the announcements. I enjoyed most of them (some were meh) but I was instantly drawn to Beekle both story and illustration wise. Dan Santat has done stellar art for several other children's books and its nice to see his work finalized recognized.  His art has an appeal of Disney storyboard with bright color schemes that remind me of the work of Mary Blair (if she had a computer and was edgier).
I had an imaginary friend as a kid so this was a nostalgic look back for me. It also vaguely reminded me of the show "Moone Boy" which features imaginary friends.

Henny by Elizabeth Rose Stanton

This book was just sweet and with just the right touch of oddness. It's the story of Henny a hen who is bored with hands. Yes human hands. Imagine adorable simple illustrations of a hen with human hands. I'm already interested. Even though she is teased, Henny discovers that being the same is overrated. In fact she embraces her difference and all the awesome things she could do. If I wrote it, Henny would use her hands to flip her bullies the bird and strut off in her awesomeness. Thankfully, the author has more tact than me. Charming, cute and also just a little weird.

Fraidyzoo by Thyra Heder

This book is golden with a surprise ending that makes you laugh because it is so spot on and true. The premise is a little girl who is afraid to go to the zoo and her family tries to discover what she is afraid of. After constructing elaborate zoo creatures out of boxes and other house hold items, the girl overcomes her fears figuring nothing her family has presented has frightened her. Until they finally visit the zoo and she comes face to face with the monster that has inspired her fear. (Spoiler Alert! It's the creepy old lady at the ticket counter!)
Nothing is scarier than scary old ladies and god if they are not everywhere striking fear in the hearts of children they meet. Pinching their cheeks! Making comments on how they want to buy them at the grocery store. Exclaiming that they just want to eat them up!  I have a 18 month old daughter and I've gone through months of this nonsense. Seriously old ladies, stay away. You are scaring my kid and creeping me out.

Slow Loris by Alexis Deacon

You really just have to read this because the illustrations are half the story. They also seem quirky and out of place for a kids picture book and remind me of the art found in a adult comic strip. Plus it is about a slow loris which is one of the cutest animals every! (Even if they do move really...really...slow)

What was your favorite read last month?