More October Awesomeness

We did spiders last week at storytime, and mild-mannered Halloween stories this week. I think my favorite out of all the books we read is Ghosts in the House, by Kazuno Kohara.

A little girl, who is also a witch, moves into a haunted house. But ghosts don't bother her, because she knows what to do with ghosts. She catches them, puts them in the washing machine, airs them out to dry, and gives them new lives as curtains, table cloths, and bed sheets. The bright and easy-to-see illustrations in orange and black with an overlay of white make this a perfect book for sharing.

For our craft this week we played with pumpkin playdough. This is my standard playdough recipe, with added cinnamon and orange food coloring. Here's the recipe:

Homemade Playdough

2 cups water
2 Tablespoons cooking oil
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 cup salt
2 cups flour
few drops of food coloring

Mix all the ingredients together in a large saucepan. Add the food coloring to the water if you are making one color of playdough. If you want to make more than one color, mix in the food coloring after it is cooked, when you knead it. Heat ingredients on medium setting, stirring constantly. It will set up quickly. Playdough is done when it holds together and pulls away from the side of the pan. Turn it out on a plate or cutting board to cool. Knead when cool enough to handle, and have fun!

Last week we made spider webs.  This is an easy craft, but it gives the children a chance to wrap yarn, which is fun to do.

Materials:
Paper plate
White yarn
foam or plastic spider
glitter glue (optional)

We used black paper plates, but you could use a plain white plate and let your child paint it black. (More activity!) Cut a 20 or so notches around the edge of the plate. Wind the yarn around and around the plate from notch to notch until it looks spider-webby enough. Glue a little spider in the middle, or let him hang from a dangling string of the yarn.

If you want to, you can add glitter along the yarn or on the spider for added Halloween sparkle.

Pumpkin Fun

Pumpkins are everywhere! I just read that the world's largest pumpkin---announced last Sunday---is an 1820.5 pound monster grown by Chris Stevens of Minnesota. Every year almost, someone manages to grow a more enormous pumpkin. I can't imagine how they do that.

The pumpkins at storytime were a more moderate size. In fact, the one I brought from my garden probably only weighs a pound and a half. It's a lovely deep shade of orange though---looks just like a pumpkin is supposed to look.

Which reminds me---is it funny that Americans use "punkin" as a term of endearment? My Russian daughter-in-law thinks so. The first time she heard me call the baby that, she was very surprised. "Pumpkin! Why are you calling her a pumpkin?" I think she thought it was weird. But in France don't they use "mon petit chou" (my little cabbage) as a baby name? Pumpkin, cabbage---does anyone call their little one "brussels sprout" or "zucchini"?  Why not?

It was all  about pumpkins at storytime today. We read It's Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall and Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper. On the board we had felt figures for the songs Did You Ever See a Pumpkin and Five Little Pumpkins.  


Here's how Did You Ever See a Pumpkin goes:

Did you ever see a pumpkin, a pumpkin, a pumpkin,
Did you ever see a pumpkin with no face at all?
With no eyes, and no nose, and no mouth and no teeth.
Did you ever see a pumpkin with no face at all?

So I made a jack-o-lantern,  jack-o-lantern, jack-o-lantern,
 So I made a jack-o-lantern and I gave him a face.
With two eyes, and one nose, and a big mouth with big teeth,
So I made a jack-o-lantern and I gave him a face.

To go along with this song I have a large felt pumpkin. It is made with a double layer of felt with a thin layer of batting in between. Then I stitched it vertically to create ribs.But it isn't necessary to get that fancy--any big felt or paper pumpkin shape will do. Cut-out eyes, nose and mouth are added as we sing.

Our craft was a laminated paper pumpkin that they can draw on using dry erase markers. I cut out the pumpkins and laminated most of them ahead of time, although if you were only making one, or a few, you could have your little assistant do some cutting and help you laminate.  

Give your child a dry erase marker and they can make jack-o-lantern faces over and over. Just wipe and draw again. I really like the idea of a reusable pumpkin face. Just be sure to not use a permanent marker, unless you want it to be permanent.

Monsters, Monsters, Everywhere!

It's time to get into the Halloween-y themes, starting off with . . .  monsters!  There are several good picture books that involve monsters . . . ones that are not too scary.

One of the best picture books ever written is Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. I love reading this book aloud; it has a wonderful rhythmic text and fantastic pictures that have not aged in 40 years. (Unlike the reader.)

A new favorite is Mo Willem's Leonardo the Terrible Monster. Leonardo is indeed terrible . . . at being a monster and scaring anybody. He gives it his best shot, and finds that there is a better way to get attention.

Everybody likes Ed Emberley's Go Away, Big Green Monster.  Troubled by monsters with long blue-green noses and scraggly purple hair? Let the author show you how to get rid of that monster one feature at a time, till it is all gone. A very satisfying interactive read-aloud.                                                                                                                                                      
If you still need help getting rid of those pesky monsters, try this song (sung to the tune of Did You Ever See a Lassie?):

If you ever see a monster, a monster, a monster,

If you ever see a monster, Then here’s what you do:

Make this face and that face and this face and that face,

If you ever see a monster---be sure to shout Boo!

The kids had fun singing this song and making crazy faces. 

Next week:  Pumpkins!

Storytime is Back!

After taking off a week to go see grandkids in Wisconsin, I am back in the library, and storytime is back on schedule. Here are the kids I went to see---Katya (8) and Jeff (5). It was a fun-filled week of birthdays parties, skateboarding, soccer, eating lunch in the cafeteria, back-to-school night, and reading bedtime stories, but alas, I had to come home.

Today was a day for reading fun stories like Worms for Lunch? by Leonid Gore, Today is Monday, by Eric Carle, and Not a Box, by Antoinette Portis. We also sang the Days of the Week Song, to the tune of Clementine:

There are seven days, there are seven days,
There are seven days in a week.
There are seven days, there are seven days,
There are seven days in a week.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

Pretty basic, eh? If you need a little help with this, you can look at this Preschool Corner version.

There are a couple other days of the week songs, such as this one (British) and this one (to the tune of The Addams Family.)  No shortage of ways to sing your way from Sunday to Saturday.

Take Me Into the Land of Books!

It was all about the library at library storytime yesterday. I especially wanted to do a storytime on the library theme, because in addition to my in-house storytime, I did four storytimes at Head Start yesterday.

I go to Head Start once a month to present storytimes for the kids. Our Head Start program here in Orland has four sessions, two in the morning and two in the afternoon. But the kids must be wondering, "Who is this lady who comes in, shows us books and sings songs, and then disappears until we've forgotten about her again?"

Well, it's Miss Nancy from the Library. What's a library?  I recognized a few of the kids, but most of them never come to the library, so they don't know about it. I'm hoping that my visits, plus handouts I give them to take home, will spark an interest in their families.

We read two books: Lola at the Library and Book! Book! Book!  Since Lola learns Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at the library, we did that for a fingerplay, and we sang The Wheels on the Bus.  I tried to teach them part of the Library Cheer. That was a little tricky for them, but I soon had them responding on "LIBRARY--CARD! LIBRARY--CARD!" Below is the whole cheer, and here is a link to the inimitable Margaret Miles leading the cheer at a conference of the Association for Rural and Small Libraries.

L-I-B-R-A-R-Y Cheer

by Garrison Keillor

Gimme an L

Gimme an I

Etc.

What’s that’s spell?  LIBRARY!

What’s that’s spell?  LIBRARY!

One more time!  LIBRARY!

I said L-I-B-R-A-R-Y you say L-I-B-R-A-R-Y

I said L-I-B-R-A-R-Y  you say L-I-B-R-A-R-Y

Where do you go for poetry? You say L-I-B-R-A-R-Y

Where do you go for history? You say L-I-B-R-A-R-Y

Where do you go if you're old and shy?  L-I-B-R-A-R-Y

Where do you go to learn how to fly?  L-I-B-R-A-R-Y

L-I-B-R-A-R-Y

I say LIBRARY you say CARD

LIBRARY – CARD

LIBRARY -- CARD

I got one and it wasn’t too hard

LIBRARY – CARD

LIBRARY -- CARD

Great big building how sweet it looks

So take me in to the land of books

To the L-I-B-R-A-R-Y  L-I-B-R-A-R-Y

It's been in your town for a hundred years.

So let's give the library three big cheers:

Hip-hip-hurray!

Hip-hip-hurray!

Hip-hip-hurray!

For a craft we made magic water bottles. It's easy, and you can see all the instructions right here.

The only thing I might change the next time is the way I glue the lid on. I used tacky glue, and that turned the water a little cloudy. Some kind of clear glue would work better. You can also add some oil to the water and it will look like bubbles.
 

Storytime in the News!

The Orland Press-Register highlighted storytime at the Orland Library in last Saturday's newspaper. Read all about it! Reporter Rick Longley came out and joined us at storytime, taking photos and talking to parents.

It must have been a slow news week, because the paper had room to publish 4 photos. Here at the library we really appreciate all the great publicity we get from the Orland Press-Register.

Invasion of the Pod People?

Found this strange growth in the garden. It's gigantic. It looks like it's about to split open and some slimy creepy THING come slithering out. What is it?

It's a Casaba melon, and this is my best year yet growing Casabas. This one is a typical specimen. It weighs about 20 pounds. Casabas are huge football-shaped melons from Turkey, first grown in California (and maybe the United States) right here in Chico by John Bidwell. I got the seeds last year from Seedsavers Exchange, and this year planted seeds that I saved from last year.

They are absolutely delicious. Out-of-this-world wonderful. The flesh is pretty much the same as a cantaloupe, but better than any cantaloupe I've ever had---creamy, sweet, yummy, and highly aromatic.

For some reason, there is another melon that goes by the name casaba, which is more like a honeydew, and not as sweet as a Bidwell Casaba.  As far as I know, this is the real deal, just like General Bidwell used to grow.