GARZ4LIB

Family Story Time: A lesson in not being cool

Since one of the Children’s part-time library assistants has left (sniff sniff) I’ve taken over a second story time every other week. This week I was too stressed out to come up with an ingenious theme combination for the second story time. So I threw together some funny books that didn’t fit in with any of my themes for the summer and the stand by favourite songs and made up a craft on the fly. The craft was extremely last-minute: a paper plate smiley face. Lame-o. Thank God for googly eyes, or things might not have been so interesting!

Family Story Time 1

Shake My Sillies Out

Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle

Little Bunny Foo-Foo

Bouncing Ball

I’m bouncing, bouncing everywhere

I bounce and bounce into the air!

I’m bouncing, bouncing like a ball

I bounce and bounce until I fall!

Oh My Gosh, Mrs. McNosh by Sarah Weeks

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily

Life is but a dream!

Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the river

If you see a polar bear

Don’t forget to shiver

Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream

If you see a crocodile

Don’t forget to scream

Row, row, row your boat

Gently to the shore

If you see a lion

Don’t forget to roar

Row, row, row your boat

Gently to a stop

And if you see a bunny there

Don’t forget to hop!

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen

The More We Get Together

Do Your Ears Hang Low?

We’re Going to the Zoo words by Tom Paxton

If You’re Happy and You Know It

We’re going on a Bear Hunt was really popular… actually one mother actually asked to check it out after the story time! All in all, despite the thrown-together, last minute nature of it all, the kids loved it! (or appeared to) and the parents didn’t make any comments on the … “crappyness” of the craft. Lesson learned? Marian maybe is right. Maybe you don’t need to re-invent the wheel every time you do a program. I guess I’m still learning to stop trying to go above and beyond time and time again. And I don’t mean that in a bragging way… Summer Reading Club case in point, my bright ideas aren’t always the easiest way of doing things.

Maybe it’s the digital education doing it to me… I feel like I have to do these pioneering and great things in the department and in programming. In all seriousness, the children’s department doesn’t necessarily need to be on the bleeding edge of anything, as much as I would like it to be. The dire reality of the situation is that in order for something cutting edge to really work in a children’s department… well of course, it needs to be something that kids will like doing, but even more importantly, it needs to be something that the parents will understand and support. Oh well, for the time being I’ll live vicariously through my teen librarian coworkers and their forays into Facebook. I wonder if I could do Webkinz story time?

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