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: 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