Sewing School

I've had sewing workshops with the older kids in the past (ages 10 and up), but due to much wailing and gnashing of teeth from a very very interested younger crowd, I decided to do a sewing class for slightly younger kids this fall. And so Sewing School, a monthly sewing program, was born. 

For the first session, I wanted to get them familiar with the basics of sewing before we started our projects.  

Everyone had a piece of flannel with a needle in it to begin with. I taught them how to thread the needle and tie a knot at the end of the yarn. Then we practiced a simply running stitch on the flannel. 

Once they were comfortable with that, we moved on to the projects: pillows with buttons and lace. 

First, they picked their fabric, the lace they wanted, and the buttons (if they wanted buttons). They cut the fabric to size using sheets of cardboard that were approximately 9x12. 

Then they used the running stitch to attach the ribbon/lace to their pieces. 

Finally, they placed the pieces right-side-to-right-side and sewed them together. 

Then stuffing and closing and TA DA! Pillows! 

The younger kids (I had ages 8-12) did remarkably well with the project and I got ALL of the needles back! (Miracle of miracles). I set the program at 90 minutes, but we probably could have used the full two hours once you factor in the waiting time to untangle thread and troubleshoot crooked projects.

The kids were very proud of their pillows, though, and excited to be involved.

Book Clubs: That's Gross!

For this month's book clubs (I run K-2 then 3rd-5th clubs back to back), I decided to do things that were gross. I pulled a whole bunch of books that we had based on the following search terms: gross, yuck, slime, disgusting, pee, farts, and poop. It was like a third grade boy's favorite Google search terms. 

I did find a whole bunch of books, though! Unfortunately, none of them were Grossology cause I guess that one gets checked out a lot. Well, that just means I don't have to promote it! 

I started by reading: Yikes! Your Body up Close by Mike Janulewicz. 

I didn't read the whole thing, just enough to gross everyone out (giant photos of lice, anyone?). I do wish the flaps had a better reveal of what you are looking at - they just show more magnified parts which you still have to decipher. The skin photo was cool, though. 

We then moved to the table to make dirt cake. I love making dirt cake with the kids. Take oreos, remove the inside stuff, and smash them. Make chocolate pudding. Put a gummy worm in the chocolate pudding and add the crushed oreos on top and I swear it looks like you're spooning up dirt. Delicious, easy, loads of kid appeal, and it involves smashing things. It never ever fails. 

Then we went to craft time: SLIME. 

We ended with slime because it was the messiest and because it invites extended play. The best recipe is from Steve Spangler Science and uses glue and borax. I've been making this particular concoction for years and it's super squishy and gross and fun to play with - definitely a winner.

Slime Ingredients

Slime as boogers. 

Though I didn't make it this time I've also made a fun-to-moosh-around slime out of cornstarch and water. You mix the two until you have a liquid-y type thing which hardens when you squeeze it: 

And when you let go it goes all liquid-y again. It's fascinating... 

 ...but rather difficult to clean up. 

I was going to teach my older kids the "Great Green Globs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts" song, but they were a little hyper and I didn't want to add fuel to the fire. It would have been so awesome, though...

I'd say this topic was very successful with both age groups. The Wee Book of Pee definitely elicited some giggles and several people were curious about how toilets work (thank god for David Macaulay!). I also had a pretty high check-out rate for the books that I had pulled, which pleased me.

Book Clubs: Historical Fiction

Every month, I have run two book clubs: Reading Rangers for grades K-2 and Pagemasters for grades 3-5. We talk about what books they are reading, read a book, make a craft, and make a snack. The theme varies from month to month, but the kids are not required to read anything specific before the club. I don't even give them the theme beforehand - I ask them to guess it based on the books I've put out for them to look at.

I start each group by putting out 20-30 books on the rug for them to look at while they wait for the program to start.

This month in our book clubs we tackled Historical Fiction. I recently weeded my intermediate chapter books and my J Fiction and I noticed that if a book was historical fiction it was much more likely to be a candidate for weeding based on circulation alone. This bums me out, so I thought I would highlight the books we have left!

Talking 'bout books and the Theme

The Reading Rangers (grades K-2) and I talked about historical fiction and why The Magic Tree House doesn't really count as historical fiction even though they travel to the past.

Then we read Sam Johnson and the Blue Ribbon Quilt by Lisa Campbell Ernst.

This one was longer than I would usually attempt at this age, so I abbreviated a little as we went. I was worried they wouldn't really be in to it, but when someone in the book says "quilting is only for women" one little girl said "no it isn't!" And the whole group gasped when the quilt fell in the mud.

The Pagemasters (grades 3-5) and I read John, Paul, George, and Ben by Lane Smith which I find hilarious. They found it less so, though they were interested in identifying each historical figure before the book gave away who they were.

I still think this book is hilarious, but I'm starting to doubt its audience. The younger ones wouldn't know who these people are (even the older ones struggled with John Hancock) and the older ones didn't seem to enjoy the humor. But, since I think it's an awesome book, I'm going to chalk this up to my inability to read it properly. 

Both groups did the same craft and snack. We made candles from crayons and made our own butter. 

Candles: 

I pulled out my much maligned toaster oven (poor thing just doesn't work well for my cooking programs) while the kids peeled broken crayon bits and put them in aluminum muffin tins. 

I popped those in the oven until the wax melted, pulled them out and added a wick, and then waited for them to harden. Fortunately, crayon wax hardens quickly. 

Butter:

 I got this idea from a coworker who uses it during a silly cow storytime. I used Talenti gelato containers that someone donated (the kids always want to know if I ate all that gelato by myself) and dice.

Pour some milk into the container. Add a pinch of salt. Add two dice (or marbles if you have them). SHAKE!!!

First you get sour cream: 

Then you get whipped cream: 

Then finally, once the water (buttermilk) separates out, you'll have butter. 

Spread it on bread.

Yum!

It takes a lot of vigorous shaking, but the kids mostly enjoyed that part. I put on "Shake it off" and, if I were to do it again, I would probably make a CD of shaking songs for motivation. 

The younger set mostly made it to whipped cream (which is totally spreadable as whipped butter and it was enough to make them happy), but the older set took great pride in opening their jars for me and having me proclaim "BUTTER!!" 

As an extra bit of butter on the bread, one of the moms sent me a photo of their dinnertime that evening with candles for ambiance and butter for deliciousness. 

I always encourage the kids to take the books I've brought to continue reading on our theme at home. 

Piñata Making

This summer I tried something new for me: three day camps. These sorts of things have never worked for me before because I could never count on the kids coming back day after day, but at this particular library, I've been seeing a good repeat rate so I thought I would give it a try. 

The benefit to the camp is that while I'm usually stuck with craft projects that can be finished in an hour, with a camp I could expand the possibilities to include more complex projects. 

Enter: the piñatas. 

Over three days, we papier-mache-d to our hearts' content and then decorated the results. 

Here's a quick breakdown: 

Monday: blow up the balloons and put on the first layer of papier mache. 

Tuesday: add cones and cups with tape then add another layer of papier mache. 

Wednesday: paint and decorate. 

For the record, the piñatas were awesome. 

Also for the record: it's sooooo much messier than you can possibly imagine. God help you if you have carpet. 

One more thing for the record: the kids LOVED it. 

Here are some of the photos I managed to take (when I wasn't in the kitchen mixing up flour and water):  

Adding party hats and cups to the piñatas.

Some kids had a very specific idea of what they were making (the one on the right will become a pig) while others just enjoyed adding points and cups to the basic round shape. 

More layers of papier mache. 

Painting! I also put out a box of fringed tissue paper for a more traditional look. 

Drying. I have a large number of foam squares and I put them all down on the carpet in a corner of the room.
The piñatas dried there every night. 

Would I do it again? Yes, absolutely. Will I make sure to do it right before we are scheduled to have our carpet cleaned. Even more emphatically: yes. 

Superhero Training: Elementary School Kids

I broke my superhero trainings into two groups: the preschoolers and the school-aged crowd. I wrote about my preschool one here. These are the modifications I made for the older group.

Craft Stations

Things I kept the same: 

Superhero capes

Superhero masks

Things I did differently:

1 - Superhero Names

I printed out several superhero name generators of the kind that match your initials to new fun superhero words and had the kids write their new super name on a nametag. Warning: some of these had words that weren't really appropriate for kids - Erotic, for example, or even Kick-ass. Rather than face the maelstrom over those words, I just substituted others. Worked out fine. Thank god for whiteout.

2 - Create a Sidekick

I wanted a craft that had side-kick in it, but I didn't want just a paper bag puppet (we had been doing those all week at our passive program craft station), so instead I found a template for moveable superheros and used those instead. You need brads and a whole punch, but they came out pretty cool.

3 - Shields

Out came my trusty Slick Stix for the superhero shields. I had ended up with lots of colored plates that failed to be masks for our Act Out! program (more on that soon) and we colored them and stapled a strip of paper to the back so they could hold the shield on their arm.

Training Course

The Laser Maze (longer and more complex this time)

Can you navigate the maze without getting caught in the tape?

The Tunnel (longer and made out of boxes so it was also a tighter fit)

Do you have the courage to crawl all the way through the tunnel?

Bowling for Villains

Knock down those Disney villains!

Might Muscles

Can you lift a bean bag over your head?

Animal Rescue (longer path with more bends in it)

Walk the path and bring the animals to safety. Be careful not to touch the lava!

Leaping Over Buildings (I used bigger boxes so the buildings were higher)

Can you leap over each group of buildings in a single bound?

The Wall (I put it higher up to match the height of our kids for this program, but the build-it-back-up portion was still part of it)

Test of strength: knock down the wall. Test of Kindness: build it back up. 

Pin-the-on-the

A former co-worker of mine at another library and I always did station-based programs around specific themes and every other time, we included a game where you had to pin the nose on the gnome or the teeth on the vampire or the tail on the bunny or... you get the picture. (For the record, I ran across my very favorite one of all time - created by the inimitable Sarah here). So when we were planning we would always add "Oh, and a pin-the-on-the." And that's what I've called them ever since. 

Here's the one I bought at the party store for the superhero party:

All in all, a great party and the kids who came out really enjoyed it. One was flying around the room saying "I'm SUPER BOY!" and really, what more can you ask for. (No, not literally flying. But his cape was fluttering behind him, so it was a good imitation).