Origami Halloween

It was after-school storytime at the library today, with a Halloween theme. I told a paper-folding story called The Princess and the Pumpkin, about Jack and how he was able to give the princess a pumpkin, even after all his pumpkins had been devoured by Pernicious Pumpkin-Dust Beetles. He did it with origami!

The traditional origami model used in the story is called a balloon, or a water bomb. It's an ingenious fold that can be blown up to make a ball that can be bounced around, or filled with water and thrown at someone. It's also useful for making Christmas decorations to hang on a tree, or little Halloween pumpkins.

Use any piece of orange paper. It doesn't have to be origami paper. Here is an instructional video for making the water bomb.  http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-an-origami-water-bomb

To make a jack-o-lantern out of this, just draw on a face and put a twist of green paper in the hole to make a stem. If you want to draw the face on before you fold the paper, draw it in the upper center. (If the piece of paper were a tic tac toe board, or a nine-patch quilt square, you would draw the face in the middle top row.)

Don't know why this came out sideways.  You get the idea.

Happy Halloweening!!

Pumpkin Time

After taking a break last week to go to a great library conference in Denver (well, near Denver), I am back to storytiming.

This week it is pumpkins. We read It's Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall, Big Pumpkin, by Erica Silverman, and a fun little pop-up book called Little Monsters, by Jan Pienkowski.

Songs included Did You Ever See a Pumpkin, Five Little Pumpkins, and the Scarecrow Song. This last one is one of my favorites, and I don't think very many people know it. It goes:

When all the cows were sleeping,
And the sun had gone to bed,
up jumped the scarecrow
And this is what he said:
I'm a dingle dangle scarecrow
With a flippy floppy hat!
I can shake my arms like this,
I can shake my legs like that!

When all the hens were roosting
And the moon behind a cloud,
Up jumped the scarecrow
And shouted very loud:
I'm a dingle dangle scarecrow
With a flippy floppy hat!
I can shake my arms like this,
I can shake my legs like that!

A fun song for jumping around and shaking your arms and legs! There is a tune online for this song here: http://www.thespeks.com/tn-dingle-dangle-scarecrow.html  although it is not exactly the same tune I use. I think I first got this song out of a little old paperback book titled This Little Puffin (from Puffin Books.)