Paint! Themed Storytime

Today was yet another day I found myself an hour away from storytime totally unprepared. Luckily, I had spied a book during this morning's class visit (You know, when a class comes, tears books off the shelves and strew them about?). I found it on the shelf and built a whole storytime around it, which worked out awesome. Bear's Picture by Daniel Pinkwater is a story that is a great way to get across to kids that not everyone has to understand your art. Plus, there are subtle notes of dealing with judgment, visualization, and perception. Then end is a nice treat. Then I found Wait! No Paint! by Bruce Whatley, which is the tale of the Three Little Pigs, but wouldn't you know it? The book's illustrator is having some difficulties and butts into the story. I remembered a couple summer reading programs ago, the theme was Be Creative! and we had a storytime-in-a-box for I Ain't Gonna Paint No More by Karen Beaumont. The box included a foam board stand up paper doll that was laminated so we could actually paint on it then wipe it off, paint, paint brushes, a tarp and paint bibs for the kids. I had a great storytime with that box. So I decided that that would be the end of today's storytime, except I drew a paper doll figure on a giant sticky note pad and used that instead of the laminated stand-up. For the paint theme finale, I read I Ain't Gonna Paint No More, which is a fun book that you can sing or rhyme along with to the tune of It Ain't Gonna Rain No More. The story is about a mom who tells her bad child that he can't paint anymore. This kid, he thinks differently and paints different parts of himself in each verse. I gave the kids who came to storytime paper doll cut outs (You can make on your own by cutting out big gingerbread men or purchase), crayons and markers. Then they colored along with the song/story. After I was done reading the book, I passed around my eye container and they chose what kind of eyes to put on their "painted" dolls. Voila! Art activity and storytime combined. Easy prep, easy clean up. Whew!

ebooks and apps for kids

Here's a great resource for librarians and parents alike. Little eLit provides information and reviews about digital products produced for children. I took a quick peruse through the blog and there are reviews of apps and ebooks as well as interesting articles on the subject. I'm not big on giving kids the opportunity to get in more screen time, but I guess if they're going to do it anyway, they might as well be reading or using a lit-based app. Either way, check it out.

My Rant on Education and Some Questionable Teachers

Every kid, in every school, in every district, in every state will not be able to understand the same things. Case in point:
A kid came in for homework help and we have excellent homework helpers at our library, yet they were stuck on a particular question on this kid's homework. He was asked to identify the picture by writing the name of the item underneath. This was an exercise in phonics, because all of the pictures were three-letter words using different A sounds. The picture my staff was stumped on was one of a tree with what looked like a stick sticking out of it and a bucket hanging from the stick. I knew what it was immediately, but that's because I watch a lot of TV. How are kids from the inner city of Los Angeles supposed to know what a tree tap is? Or is the word supposed to be sap? Or if it weren't three-letter words, I would've suggested "maple." I was tempted to send a note back to the teacher, but I let it go.

Another kid came in with this ridiculous project topic: What is the role of the library in the community? Now, as a librarian, not only do I know the answer to the question, but I can find ample articles to support my point. What makes this project ridiculous is the fact that it was assigned to a 2nd grader. I dare you... double dare you to find information explaining the role of the public library that a 2nd grader can read. Go ahead. I hope you find something and can share with me because I searched books, databases and all over the Internet, but was unable to find anything below a 6th grade level. Now, what teacher is going to send their 2nd graders out on that kind of goose hunt without searching for themselves to see if there is any information on the topic? The teacher who doesn't care or forgot that they weren't teaching a high school level course. Oh yeah! That's right. Huh.

And then there are the teachers who send all 30+ kids in their class to the library to get books and information on the same topic. Could you give us a heads-up, for goodness sakes? At 3:30 p.m., one kid comes in asking for books on China, we give him all the information he can hold. Then half an hour later the rest of the class is lined up, but all the China books were checked out by the first kid because we had no idea the whole class had the same project. Would it have hurt that teacher to give us a call on Monday to inform us they'd be assigning that topic on Friday? How much time would that take them and save us here at the library. Countless hours my friend. Countless hours.