Triangle Storytime

This week we covered mountains, crazy hats, and pizza, as well as singing and dancing to The Shape Song Swingalong.  It was another small group with an age range from under 1 year old to kindergarten.  I usually don’t like that dynamic, but in this case it worked out pretty well.  I usually put the “hardest” story – the one that requires the most attention and/or has the least interactivity – in the middle so that I at least have them at the beginning and the end of the storytime.  That strategy worked out really well this week. No one called me out on the fact that a hat is actually a cone, not a triangle, and a slice of pizza is really a wedge.  So I may not have any budding mathematicians, but at least we all had fun.

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Squares & Rectangles Storytime

Today I did a tandem Squares & Rectangles storytime.  Before each story, we introduced why it went with the theme.  (Boxes? Square.  Letters & envelopes? Square.  Beds & pillows? Square.  Invitations & presents? Square.)  Any time I get to act out I Am Invited to a Party, it’s the highlight of my week.  What’s not to love?  Fancy dress pool costume parties!  Dancing to “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang!  It’s all so, so good.

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Boys & Books: Edgar Allan’s Official Crime Investigation Notebook

Boys & Books interests me because it’s one of those programs that doesn’t have a huge turnout, but has such a large impact for those who do attend and is so closely tied to our mission that it feels like we have to keep it up as long as those few families are interested.  It’s only been going for a year, so it’s not like I would be killing it right now for non-attendance anyway, but there’s something super-gratifying about having the boys ask at the end when the next session is and why they have to wait so long.  They were SO bummed to hear that we’d be taking a break when our library construction starts in March.  February  had better rock!  (Fortunately we’re reading about Pompeii and making erupting volcanoes, so I think we’re going to go out on a high note.)

Today’s Boys & Books focused on Edgar Allan’s Official Crime Investigation Notebook by Mary Amato.  I cleverly planned this at the same time as my forensics science program, so I had lots of good mystery material to work with.  I couldn’t totally recycle because I had one boy at both programs, but the planning still overlapped a ton.

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Circle Storytime

We had so much fun doing color storytimes in the fall that we decided to go with another round of somewhat abstract themes.  From now through mid-February, we’re doing shape themed storytimes.  We started off this week with circles, which had loads of fun story possibilities.  One of our storytime staff was sick last week and wasn’t really up to storytime this morning.  Her loss was my gain – I get to do two rounds of circle stories this week!  I may entirely switch it up for the second go to sneak in some other favorites.

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