Ukeing It

I went to a conference session earlier this year put on by our State Library about instruments in library programs. There was a mini grant available for over a dozen libraries throughout the state, to receive a ukulele kit. It had all the equipment you would need for care and upkeep of an instrument to use in Storytimes.

I fell in love with the idea. I applied for the grant. I didn't get it. Sadness.

But it became a worm in my brain that just wouldn't go away. My parents let me pick out a guitar when I was 15, but I found it hard to learn on the classical model I selected. To all accounts, though, ukulele is a bit easier to wrap minds and hands around. They are much smaller and have only 4 strings.

So I started looking on Amazon and other sites for a ukulele of my very own. I had a few criteria:

1) It had to be cheap. I was using my own money. So, cost was a factor.

2) It had to be a basic model to learn on. Tenor and Baritones are lovely, but a bit too close to guitar for me.

3) It absolutely, without a doubt, had to be purple.

I ended up purchasing a Mahalo U-30PP Soprano Ukulele in, you guessed it, purple. It had good reviews for being a beginning instrument, though seasoned players didn't seem to be too kind. Still, it fit all my requirements.

The first thing I noticed was that the strings kept going out of tune. With a little Googling, I found out that this is a common problem with nylon strings. So, rather than take the time to tune and re-tune, in order to stretch them, I opted for upgrading the strings.

I got a chord book, found some awesome sites for storytime ukulele songs, and got to playing. Youtube helped out a lot. Especially in the re-stringing department.

I decorated my uke with Sharpies, and my husband absolutely insisted I clear coat it. Luckily neither of these things changed the sound much. I have since invested in a digital tuner, a stand, and a strap with a button.

Soprano ukes rarely come equipped with a strap button because they are so small and portable. But I work with preschoolers and most of the songs I sing require the use of my hands. So I got the strap to give me versatility, and the stand to keep it out of the way when we are reading.

All in all, I've been very pleased with my new instrument. I'm learning more and more chords. It doesn't require tons of daily practice. And it has got me in to playing again. So far, I have learned 5 children's songs (two of which have made it into Storytime), as well as Creep by Radiohead and Lola by The Kinks (neither of which will ever be played in Storytime).

I've even gotten so into it, that I bought my uke a buddy.

But more on that later.

Dance Parties Abound

So I have been doing our preschool dance parties for a few months now. And they are so popular that I have decided to make them a monthly event. I will be writing a library service plan later in the year to that effect.

But alas I have been lax in blogging about them. So here is at least a sampling of the play list handouts for each. Please forgive the MS Word markup on the screenshots.

I have a couple of staple songs that I always use for the Opening Action, Cleanup, and Goodbye Songs to maintain consistency. I always open all my programs with the Skinnamarink song. For storytimes we just sing it, but for dance party I found a recorded version from Kindermusik International on our library's Freegal service.

I also use Laurie Berkner's Clean it up for putting away whatever rhythm instrument we use that day. We always finish up with Rusted Root's Send Me On My Way (from one of my favorite scenes in the movie Mathilda).

We did a Holiday themed dance party. I admit I did get a little too ambitious again and tried to include the Sesame Street version of The Twelve Days of Christmas AS A FELTBOARD. I have no idea what I was thinking, but for the record, I do not recommend interjecting feltboards in dance party. They work in storytimes, but even if they are set to songs, they cut the energy down too much in a program that is based on music and motion.

I had a late marketing thought at the start of the year with the dance parties. I had been getting free music from Freegal's Sony music library to use in the programs. But I hadn't been promoting it on the handouts. 

Our library CEO is doing a promotional tour highlighting our various and sundry downloadables services. So I've started adding in notes as to which songs patrons can get on Freegal, and which are available though the library's CD collection.

I have tried many iterations of rhythm instruments for our rhythm portion. I usually do 1-2 rhythm instruments songs per program. I have found that the kids do the best with the rhythm sticks. 

Our system has a set in our internally circulating Storytelling collection. But I did recently request to purchase a set of rhythm sticks for our branch. The lovely ladies in our programming department say we will get them soon. Yay!

Book Pick: Kid Sheriff and the Terrible Toads

Kid Sheriff and the Terrible Toads

By Bob Shea and Lane Smith

ISBN:     9781596439757

1596439750

Dry Water Gulch has a Toad problem. A gang of outlaws is running rampant until a little lawman rides into town on his trusty tortoise. He uses his extensive knowledge of dinosaurs to outsmart the varmints and bring peace back to town. This whimsical western looks like Gunsmoke but reads like Dudley Do-Right. A great funny read!

Alphabet Soup Letter "B"

It has been a while since I've blogged. So I'm putting in a double post for the start of the year. I started out the month as I always do with our Early Literacy Series, Alphabet Soup. Last week's featured letter was "B".

I was getting a little nervous because I had requested one of the books I needed for the program from another branch weeks ago. It came in right on the wire, the morning of the program.

We started out with Baking Day at Grandma's by Anika Denise. It set an appropriate tone with it's wintery theme and repeating B words. It also has a great recipe for chocolate cake in the back that kids can bake with their parents. I used this as my take home activity for the back of my handout.

Then we jumped into an the action rhyme "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear." This kept the bear theme going but also gave us a chance to get up and move around.

Next was Miss Brooks Loves Books (and I don't) by Barbara Bottner. Library and bibliophile themes galore. Reluctant reader finds a book to love. I was sold. I worried that it might be a bit too long. But when we started to talk about warts and snorting, the kids were sold too. I'm planning on putting the sequel, Miss Brooks' Story Nook in next month's letter "S" program.

Then it was time for our letter sound identification activity. This time, I introduced the "Mystery Bag."  I filled a paper sack with objects. Some of them started with the featured letter. Some did not. I asked the kids to put their hand in the bag and pull out an object, then drop them into a basket. One basket was labeled with the letter "B", the other one was labeled "Non-Letter B".

They had a lot of fun closing their eyes and reaching in to feel around for the objects. Again, I think this may be a keeper of an activity. It was a lot easier to set up than the fish pond for "F" or the Sorting Hat for "H".

We finished up with a Venezuelan version of The Wheels on the Bus by By Melanie Williamson
and the Amador Family. The craft was Letter "B" Bear Bag puppets.

There was also a Winter Storm Alert in our area, and the windchill was dipping us into sub-zero temperatures. So preschool attendance was pretty low. But I was grateful that we had limited attendance for this, as the kids could take their time with the many small pieces, and there were lots of laughs with parents.

Frozen Science

Last week was cool, but holy crap you guys, this week I did my FIRST STEAM PROGRAM EVER!

Our Frozen Science program took a heck of a lot to setup and reset between my back-to-back morning programs. But it was totally awesome!

We started out with a Disney picture book adaptation of Frozen by Victoria Saxon. Again, I was worried it might be a little long. But apparently everyone in the room had seen the movie, so the kids were adding in parts of the story that were pared down in the book.

Then it was time for our first ice experiments. We discussed how ice is made by freezing water, how it occurs naturally in winter. I had a bowl of ice cubes ready and a bowl of water. I asked the kids if they thought ice would sink to the bottom or float on top of the water. Then each child got to drop an ice cube in to see if it would sink or float.

We talked about how in science, we use our eyes to observe things. I did another demonstration on melting salt where I set out ice cubes in three bowls and sprinkled cold water, hot water, and colored salt over some ice cubes. I asked them all which one they thought would melt fastest.

We let the cubes set and moved on to our action story, "The Snow Queen with the Cold Cold Heart" from Naomi Baltuck's Crazy Gibberish. This is a great resource for Action songs. There were specific actions associated with each character, that the kids would act out each time i said the character's name. This gave us just enough time to see what happened with our ice cube experiment afterwards. (Spoilers: the ice melts best with salt.)

I switched things up and got the kids and parents started on a simple fold-and-cut snowflake craft. This bought me time to set up the next ice activity, that I dubbed "Queen Elsa's Cold Cold hands." It was modeled after a wonderful activity from the Happy Hooligans Blog.

This is where setup got a bit crazy. I had three frozen hands containing beads, sequins, and glitter for each class. 

To melt the hands: I had multiple bowls of different colored salt, red tinged warm water (not too warm) and blue tinged cold water (not too cold). I used food color and kosher salt so everything was non toxic. I even made sure to get vinyl gloves for creating the frozen hands in case of latex allergies.

The kids had fun pouring the salt over the hands with spoons and dropping water over them with pippettes. I had two sets of each of the supplies and the larger groups had to share a lot more than the smaller groups. But the parents helped, and everyone had a good time. 

                               

One little girl even asked. "Are we doing science?" to which I replied an emphatic. "Yes you are!" 

Overall, two excellent programs to start the new year. And now just comes the clean up. Joy!

Sick Sucks

Due to a health issue I have not been up to posting about my programs over the last few weeks. My apologies.

I had a great Thanksgiving program where we made paper turkeys. We talked about cornucopias and I talked about it's origins in Greek mythology. I even made a flannel board, which I completely failed to take photos of for the blog, because I was tired. Ditto for the Christmas storytime and its Rudolph, Rudolph felt game.

Luckily I got most of my weekly  weeding done already. But still, I want to take a massive run at our juvenile nonfiction shelves in our slow December days.

I finally got a diagnosis this week, and am now properly hopped up on antibiotics. So yay!... in as far as yay means "I'm going to go take a nap."

More illustrated and enthusiastic posts to come.

Alphabet Soup Presents the letter F

Every month I do one program that focuses on letter sounds. It is part of the Early Literacy initiative that was established in my branch before I arrived. Planning activities, books, and crafts based on a single letter can get a little dry at parts. So I tend to go at it like my own personal episode of Sesame Street.

Learning and letter sound recognition are the goal, but I like to throw in a physical activity as well as a felt board activity. So we can get off our seats and jump around. I hate to be bored and I hate for the kids to be bored.

That is why I may have bitten off a little more than I could chew with our letter F program this week. I knew that I wanted to make a felt board story out of Fall is Not Easy by Marty Kelley. I love how the tree keeps trying to get his leaves to come out right. And, as stated by Abby the Librarian on her wonderful blog, it works reaally well as a felt story.

The kids were all staring blankly while I went through winter and spring. But as soon as I busted out the rainbow leaves, they broke into peels of laughter.

This is one of the many reasons I LOVE WORKING WITH PRESCHOOLERS! They have a sense of humor. And there is nothing funnier to them than finding a treetop that has turned into a cheeseburger...

Or the earth....

Or a jack-o-lantern...

So now that I had their attention, it jumped into the physical activity portion. Now this is where I may have gotten a bit too ambitious...or completely lost my mind. Take your pick.

Yes, Ylvis made a children's book based on the Youtube video What Does the Fox Say? Originally, I was just going to read the book. But then a coworker suggested that I play the song for the kids first. Then that degraded into a downward spiral, where I thought "Hey, this is a good dance song! Why don't we dance to the song while I read the book?"

Well the good news is, we mostly had fun. Many of the parents facepalmed when they saw the cover of the book. Which I chose to take as an amusement rather than a clue.When I told the kids that they could dance, many of them did.

But a lot just stood there confused. Were we reading a story or dancing to a song? And then Youtube decided it did not like my ipod dock. So I lost a lot of interest just in trying to get the thing back up and running. All in all, it was a learning experience.

We discussed what other animal names started with the letter F and read The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister.

We did an activity where we fished for paper fish with words printed on them. I attached paperclips to the ends of the fish, and we had a dowel rod with a magnet stringed onto it for a fishing pole. I got them to line up by designating a child to go first and telling them to "put their feet behind someone else's feet. The parents had to help a bit, but they got the idea fairly quickly.

TIP: When using this method, always keep track of the fishing pole. The kids don't have the spacial recognition to see that they are about to whack someone with the pole.

Some of the words started with F and some did not. So I asked the kids to show me their fish. I would read the word on the fish to them and ask if it started with F or not. The whole group can join in to sound it out and to answer. Then they got to put their fish on the felt board. (I have a blue sensory bin and a blue felt board to keep the ocean theme going)

Then we went to the craft table. Paper plate fish were easy enough and the kids had a lot of fun choosing the colors for their fins, tails, and eyes. We used googly eyes and paper plates for the bodies, but all the fins were precut from construction paper by me and some library staff, the week before. (Thanks, Brittany and Suzanne!)

I briefly toyed with the idea of letting the kids color the fish with markers. But I decided that the fishing activity took up too much time for that. So I told the kids they were welcome to color at home.

By the time I handed out stickers for their nametags at the end, they had forgotten our lining up skills. But I figure it is a work in progress.