“Back to School” Minute to Win It

September 7, 2013September 7, 2013Leave a comment

Kids at my library love Minute to Win It – and trust me, I love running this program. I ran this program on zero budget. I grabbed leftover supplies from the summer and grabbed whatever I could from home.

The Challenges

Breakfast Scramble
Ring, ring, ring! Time to eat breakfast before school starts – but what’s for breakfast? In this challenge, you have to unscramble the box to find out what’s on the menu. If you fail to complete the challenge in 60 seconds, you’ll go to school hungry.

Don’t Disturb the Librarian
When you’re in the library, you must be absolutely silent. Stack the 30 novels on top of another in tower in 60 seconds or less. If you fail to complete the tower, or you make too much noise and alert the librarian, you have to start over!

Keep Your Grades Up
It takes intelligence, dedication, and ability to juggle many tasks to get straight A’s. In this challenge, you won’t be keeping your grades up, but you will have to keep three balloons in the air. Fail to keep the balloons in the air for 60 seconds or less, and you’ll repeat the first grade!’

Snack Stack
It’s almost lunch time, and you have chocolate on your mind. Balance a Tootsie Roll on your forehead, without dropping it, or tipping it over. Complete this challenge in 60 seconds or less, and you’ll be a happy snacker. Fail, and you’ll kiss the Tootsie Roll goodbye.

History Class
Off to history class you go and guess what – POP QUIZ! In this challenge, it is a game of memory. You must match up the faces of eight Prime Ministers. Flip over two cards, if they’re correct, keep them, if not, flip them back over and start again. Fail to match all the eight Prime Ministers in 60 seconds or less, you fail the test. I hope you studied.

Lunch Time
There’s nothing worse than dropping a tray of cafeteria food in the lunch room. In this challenge, you must transport the cafeteria tray to the garbage, but carrying it with one hand. But, beware of obstacles in your way! Fail to complete this challenge in 60 second or less, and tomorrow, you eat the mystery meat.

Math is a Breeze
Do you think math is a breeze? In this game, you need to prove it by sorting card. First, you must separate all the hearts from the deck of cards. Second, you must put them in order lowest to highest. Ace is low and King is high. Fail to complete this challenge in 60 seconds or less, and you can subtract any prizes from your future.

Paper Done Warfare
The aeronautical engineers of today learned their craft in math and science classrooms of yesteryear – by throwing paper airplanes at one another. In this challenge, you will prove whether or not you have the right stuff by successfully landing five aircraft in the wastebasket. Fail to complete this challenge in 60 seconds or less, and instead of drone pilot, you’ll be peeling potatoes in the mess hall.

For the printable worksheet, click here.

The Library of the Traveling Journal

August 30, 2013September 5, 2013Leave a comment

What’s a summer program without journal making? I had leftover paper from the Happy Birthday Andy Warhol program, so I decided to use that up while setting up the materials for this program. I did this program for under $10 and that was for about 20 kids to make journals. This is a great way to use up all the “left over” craft supplies that are sitting in your craft locker.

The final project was fabulous – and the kids had a blast doing it. We even went over 30 minutes!

I began by making an insert for the journal. You know me, I LOVE creating document pages. You don’t have to do this, you can just use blank paper.

I folded all the inserts in advance and poked two holes at the crease. I folded the cover page and poked holes at each end. You don’t have to do this. I did it because it was easier for the kids to have it already half assembled.

I had the kids string the string through the insert and through the cover. We tied a bow on the outside of the cover. And then it was time to decorate! Here are some of the journals they made:

Up, Up, Up Away – Paper Mache Ballons

August 30, 2013Leave a comment

Summer programming has come to the end at my branch. I’m not in the process of documenting what’s been going on. We had great program attendance – probably the best ever – all thanks to two creative children’s librarians!

Up, Up, Up Away was probably my favourite program that we ran all summer. The hot air balloons turned out so well! This is the kind of program that you can run, low budget, with great results.

NOTE: This was a two day project. The balloons needed to dry for at least 24 hours.

Materials

balloons
Glue
shredded newspaper
mini aluminum pie plates
String
Paint and brushes

Paper Mache Mixture

Pour Elmer’s Glue into a bowl and mix in water. Your mixture should be 1 part water and 3 part glue.

Day One: Instructions

Rip up strips of discarded newspapers. You don’t want them to be too small, or two big. About 10 cm by 5 cms in length.
Blow up balloons
Dip newspaper strips into glue and cover the balloon. You want to make sure you’re covering the entire balloon. Cover the balloon at least four times. The thicker the paper, the more sturdy the balloon will be.
Let it dry for at least 24 hours.

Paper Mache Balloons

Day Two: Instructions

Once the balloon is dry, pop it! Don’t worry, it shouldn’t make a loud pop!
Poke a hole at the top of the balloon and four holes at the opening of the balloon (two on each side). These holes allow for the basket to be strung.
Hole punch four holes in the mini pie plate (two on each side).
Paint the balloon!
Once dry, string the basket, and you’re done!
Take four pieces of

Adventure Storytime: Ocean Adventure

August 21, 2013August 21, 2013Leave a comment

I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had a chance to blog about some of my summer programming. Now that kids are out of school, they’ve been keeping me busy! I changed my storytime up at the last minute because I didn’t like my original story. Three by the Sea by Mini Grey was just a little too complicated for my age group.

Story: Captain Bob Sets Sail by Roni Scotter

This story is about Bob who is about to take a bath. He turns his bath time into a PIRATE and OCEAN adventure. The kids had a wonderful time watching Captain Bob (and his bare bum) in the bathtub.

Craft: Ocean Adventure

For the craft, I kept it simple. I traced a “fish bowl” onto a piece of paper and had it pre-cut for the kids.

Fish Bowl

Find a template of fish online. I looked up colouring pages of fish and had them pre-cut for the kids – so all they had to do was colour. I also cut out seaweed and sand too. (I’m working with younger children, so they haven’t learned to cut yet. They glued the fish in the fish bowl and used crayons to colour. Very simple – and LOW COST!

Ocean Adventure

Happy Birthday Andy Warhol!

August 8, 2013August 21, 2013Leave a comment

August 6th would have been Andy Warhol’s 85th birthday and why not celebrate his birthday by learning about the pop art movement. I began the program by teaching the kids about the pop art movement, followed by reading “Uncle Andy’s” by James Warhola, then we recreated some pop art!

Lesson

Andy Warhol is the first modern art superstar. He is known for his simple, but strong and colourful art. He created “Pop Art.” The word “pop” means popular. He focused his art on supermarket products, rock stars, and models. He loved to make pictures of people and things everyone could recognize, whether it was a dollar bill, Elvis Presley, or a can of the Campbell’s soup he ate for lunch everyday.

Andy would take images from pop culture and reproduce them. Not everyone was happy with Andy’s work because they thought it wasn’t original. They thought he was stealing from other artists and he got into a bit of trouble. He got sued by a few people – but he settled by giving royalties to the original artists.

Literacy

Uncle Andy’s by James Warhola describes his visit with his uncle, Andy Warhol, New York City .

Project

I asked the kids if Andy Warhol was alive today, what sorts of portraits would be paint? The kids said Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, and One Direction. I made templates and photocopied them on watercoloured paper so the kids could paint and colour just like Andy would do.

I chose “modern” images such as minions, Mickey and Minny Mouse, Angry Birds logo, Star Wars, and even Woody from Toy Story. Here’s what some of the kids reproduced: