Thrive Thursday May Round-Up

I am happy to host the May Day edition of the Thrive Thursday blog hop. It's a chance for us to read about programs, thoughts and initiatives happening for our school-age audience. Enjoy!

ACTIVE PROGRAMS
Who doesn't love Geronimo Stilton - and all his friends! Lisa over at Thrive After Three blog breaks down a great four week series for us.

Carol at Program Palooza did two Earth Day-related programs here and here that combine fiction, non-fiction and a re-cycled craft.

More Earth Day friendly crafts are on tap at Ms. Kelly at the Library's blog.

And Lisa suggests a Lorax Book Vs. Movie program that has a nice Earth Day connection too!

Why not re-purpose a fun craft-it program for Money Smart Week by having the kids "buy" their supplies to bring math into the STEAM picture? Amy of Show Me Librarian shares in a guest post at Library as Incubator blog

Disability awareness becomes part of this program from Carol at Program Palooza.

American Girl Addy is the focus at Ms. Kelly at the Library's program.

Unprogramming might with Elephant and Piggie shows up at my blog Tiny Tips.

Movies...er, I mean book trailers!! Dawn over at Story Time with and Signs and Rhymes shares how 5th graders made book trailers of her book.

Create a Picture Book workshop series...seriously! Story Time with and Signs and Rhymes Dawn takes readers on a step by step process on creating a workshop where kids learn the ins and outs of authorship!

With summer coming up, this ALSC webinar inspired wiki space on STEM programs will inspire you.


STEALTH/PASSIVE PROGRAMS
Need some passive programs for spring break? Sara at S. Bryce Kozla to the rescue!

Angie at Fat Girl Reading has two more spring break stealth programs that are a cinch to set up.

Need a poetry passive program/display? Mel at Mel's Desk shares her colleague Julie's great work!

Less Screen Time Week is how Wisconsin librarian Sue Abrahamson is rethinking Screen Free Week, May 5-9, as guest poster on Tiny Tips for Library Fun.


PROGRAM THOUGHTS
Over at Kids Library Program Mojo, a blog for librarians taking a youth services programming CE course:  Michelle shared thoughts about the pressures on parents and program attendance; and Erin reflects on how we can meet parents where they are in our programming.

Re-imagining library tours into a truly phenomenal experience takes time and effort that I reflect on here at Tiny Tips.

And to bring us home, Sara at S. Bryce Kolza starts solving for the equation of school family literacy outreach awesomeness using some Brewfest math.


Stay tuned for the June blog hop hosted at Thrive After Three. And if you'd like to host a month, contact Lisa Shaia, our intrepid founder and scheduler to throw your hat in the hosting ring: lisamshaia (at) gmail (dot com). We also have a Pinterest board and a Facebook Group, so join in on the fun!

Dynamic Dinosauria!*

Any day or time is a great time for a dinosaur program. While I love doing them for any age, I especially enjoy doing these programs for school agers - the non-fiction elements are just too good to pass up and it's a wonderful STEM opportunity.

Here is how we did our most recent dinosaur program:
Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins.  Barbary Kerley; Illus by Brian Selznick
This Caldecott honor is great to book talk. Two hundred years ago, people hadn't the slightest idea on what dinosaurs looked like. English artist Hawkins studied the bone fragments and structures and used his own knowledge of animals to build life size models of what dinosaurs looked like. He held a dinner party in a hollowed out dinosaur to create excitiement and eventually created a huge garden to display the behemoths to the public.

Bones Bones Dinosaur Bones. Byron Barton
This is a great short picture book on archaeology and fossil hunting.

Activity: Have kids glue dry penne pasta (bones) onto a dinosaur outline. Doing it early in the program gives the glue plenty of time to dry. It also gives us a chance to talk about how hard it was for scientists to figure out exactly how all the fragments theyuncovered fit together. Imagine putting a dinosaur skeleton together without an outline. What bone connects to what bone?!?! Thanks to Sunflower Storytime for this much used idea here at LPL!

How Big Were the Dinosaurs. Bernard Most (very humorous) OR
How Big Were Dinosaurs. Lita Judge (great contrasts)
Read either of these books that examine and compare the size of dinosaurs.

Activitiy: Have a ball of string or yarn 130 feet long (don't tell the kids how long). Tie it at one end of the room and have kids take turns unrolling it as you "measure a dinosaur.  This was the size of a diplodocus. Lots of ooohs and aaahs along the way. Then bring the kids and string back and have them measure how long the string is with yard stick and tape measure. Talk about what else they think might be that long around the community.

Unrolling the string

Activity: As the final ending activity, I cannot resist asking kids to be fossil hunters. We talk about the painstaking careful excavation of fossils and dinosaur bones with small picks, trowels and even brushes to carefully reveal small fragments. Everyone receives a chocolate chip cookie and a toothpick. We ask each child to carefully excavate one chocolate chip from the cookie with the toothpick - and then gobble up the results.

With lots of non fiction books on display ready for check-out this is a sure fire hit and an easy way to do science with fierce fans of dinaosaurs!

* a huge tip of the hat and genuflecting reverence to Sandy Berman who back in the day fought mightily - and often successfully-  to push LC subject headings from the academically bizarre to the practical, useful and reality-reflecting modern day. As a young librarian, there WAS no such thing as a subject heading called "Dinosaurs". No my friends, it was really, really truly "Dinosauria". Here's to Sandy and his amazing leadership that still stands us in good stead.

Thinking About Science

With next year's CLSP (Collaborative Summer Library Program)  theme centering on science, I am starting to gather ideas and thoughts and pins on sources for fun programs.  I have this idea that we are going to create a robot-mascot of some sort and use it in many thematic ways.

One idea I have is putting a robot head on the wall. Then as kids read and we set group goals, we start adding a body part on after so many minutes read. The more kids read, the more complete the robot will be - first a boot, then a leg, then a hand,then an arm and onward. Let's see if that motivates the reading troops!

But more than that, we get to do science all summer.

I know it will be a gimme for programs and activities. That's because STEM and STEAM have entered our public library vocabulary.  It has freed us to look not just at fiction-based programming but at non-fiction-based science: makering, experiments and unprogramming (where kids take the lead in discovery and learning in programs).

A recent post by Allison over at No Time for Flashcards got me excited about the prospects of science for our tots. It goes hand in hand with another favorite blog, library makers Wonder Works, where the littlest kids delve into science and go where few tots and gone before.  I also depend on Amy over at Show Me Librarian (and a frequent ALSC blog contributor on the subject) who generously shares STEAM programs through her blog posts on programs at her library.

You can drop my SLP 2014 Pinterest board over the coming year to see what mischief I'm collecting.

Where are your go to blogs and websites for science and kids? Let's share the good stuff!

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Marsh Meander: STEAM-y

Naturalist Steph wowing kids with a turtle shell

Some of my favorite programs over the years have involved collaboration with community partners or everyday experts who come in (or we go out to) to create fun experiences for the kids.  When we saw the CLSP theme of Dig into Reading for the year we knew that we were going to have plenty of opportunities to partner up.

Our city is absolutely blessed with wild, natural places: towering bluffs, the Mississippi River, marshland, forested areas and prairie (I know!!!). Combined with a significant number of residents who place high value on sustainability, preserving recreational opportunities and in "getting back to nature" (eating and growing locally and organically), we get a perfect storm of partnerships.

One such partnership was with our city Eco-Park which includes significant acreage with trails in one of our marshes. Beautiful at any time of the year, the marsh is filled with wildlife and wild places that are brought up close and personal with the trails laid through it. Bikers, hikers, strollers, skaters, birders and scientists flock to the area. It's a perfect place to "dig into".

Checking for fish

I contacted the park's naturalist Steph and asked if she would be willing to go on a marsh walk with us. I would episodically share the First Nations story of how the earth was formed on turtle's back (how handy - the tale features creatures found throughout the marsh and that we might see on our meander) at stops along the walk and she would share marsh facts. She agreed. And that was the extent of our communication. She knew I knew story and I knew she knew marsh.

Spotting ducklings

We held the walk a few days ago and it was like a dream come true. Our gathering of kids and parents strolled, learned tips and facts about flora and fauna from Steph and pretty much thrilled to the tale of Skywoman's precipitous fall and the brave animals who helped save her and create the earth.  The kids soon used their new nature-detective eyes to spot dragonflies (and red-winged blackbirds eating the dragonflies and leaving iridescent wings lying everywhere to be collected), ducklings, flowers, herons duckweed and more. Steph's shoulder bag held bug jars, turtle shell, a duck wing and skull, a beaver skull and other goodies to teach the kids more about what the were seeing.

We also share a library collection with the Eco-Park (identification guides and books about the flora and fauna found there) so it was a perfect place to promote books and reading as well. Kids and parents appreciated the opportunity to discover and learn about the ecology of a treasured natural resource right in their backyard. And a chance for their nature-nut children's librarian to get out of the shop and meander down the trail talking story, listening and learning marsh facts and chatting library on a perfect June day?  Well, priceless!

How Does the Library Garden Grow?

Well, of course, if the national Collaborative Summer Library Program (CLSP) theme is "Dig into Reading" and I am an avid gardener, how can we NOT do a children's garden this summer?

Two dedicated, innovative and energetic adult services librarians just started a Seed Saving Library here in spring and I had the fun of meeting alot of gardeners through their efforts. Two of them met with me to talk about how we might make growing things happen in our our very urbanized location.

Challenge 1 - Location
We have had a significant amount of small vandalism and we wanted to protect the children's garden. We talked with our adjoining historical museum staff and they agreed to let us put a garden in their locked courtyard.

Challenge 2 - Location Again
No place to plant the plants. My gardening buds suggested building a square foot garden. Perfect, I thought. I just happen to live with the handiest handy-guy in the world and building a frame would be presto-chango easy for him.

Challenge 3 - Location Yet Again
Our museum is moving out and has some gigantic and very heavy architectural doo-dads scattered everywhere in the courtyard - and they need to move them out this summer. Our square foot garden would be in the way. Said handy-guy sez "Well, we'll just put the whole thing on wheels." And so he did.

So last week we dug and planted seeds and herbs and veggies with the kids.

We talked and chatted about growing plants.

We watered.

We tested chive blossoms. Yes, you heard me right, the kids actually picked off the blossoms and tried them.

Each week we'll meet briefly with the kids to water, weed and test the plants and veggies. I'll keep you posted on how this weekly program goes throughout the summer.  It may end up just being me out there...but  I hardly think I'll mind!

DIY Art is EZ

We have started a tradition at our library of holding some kind of kid-led DIY art or decoration program within the first week or two of the start of Summer Library Program.  We gather art materials and let the kids loose.

It may be our easiest, mellowest and most delightful program. And we never have to worry about pre-decorating the area to a theme. The kids take care of it with their creative touches.

This year, thanks to Crayola Window Markers, a crowd of kids created a garden of beauty on our windows. These few pictures hardly do justice to the work of the sixty kids who filled eight windows with their ideas. If you happen to be passing by in the next eight weeks though...