Winter Display

Rather than doing a typical holiday display for the month of December, I decided to share my love of children's winter themed books with a snowy display.  One of my all time favorite characters is Peter from Ezra Jack Keat's Snowy Day so I made Peter first.  I adore his cute little red snowsuit.  This display also gave me the opportunity to share my love of terrible puns by creating the headline, "SNOW Better Time to Read!"  I know that Corduroy is not a snowy character, but I wanted classics so I put him in a pair of ice skates (removable, of course, so I can use him in future displays!)  Finally, I finished up with the Snowman from Raymond Briggs' classic.  I vividly remember watching the film adaptation of Briggs' wordless picture book The Snowman as a child, and it is still (obviously) one of my favorites.

Winter Mitten Craft

Although I did not work the day of our holiday party, I did offer to help by preparing materials for a fun craft the kids could do.  Since it is a holiday party, I wanted to do something winter themed that could be used as a pretty decoration for any holiday: mitten ornaments!  I pre-cut pairs of felt mittens in an assortment of colors using the AccuCut (I don't know how I could live without this thing in a library), and made a little slit in the top of each one, connecting the pair with a pipe cleaner.  You could also use yarn, but the pipe cleaner was easier to use, important when you are preparing sixty pairs of mittens.  Finally, for the fun part, I decorated the mittens with glitter glue, sequins, cotton puffs, and foam letters.  Staff reported that the mitten craft was a definite hit!

Five Little Snowmen

My new winter storytime flannel board staple:

"Five Little Snowmen"!
(chant to the tune of "Five Little Monkeys")...

     Five little snowmen riding on the sled!
     One fell off and bumped his head!
     Frosty called the doctor and the doctor said,
     "NO MORE SNOWMEN riding on the sled!"

(Continue verses with 4, 3, 2, 1, etc.)

Happy Howlidays!

This post really isn't library related. But at least I can say I have an occupation where I could wear something like this to work and it would be completely socially acceptable, and anyways this little gem is quite crafty.  My cousin and I made new holiday sweaters.  I just got a new black labradoodle puppy named Oliver and so my sweater obviously pays homage to him.  The writing was done with sparkly glitter glue, and we used hot glue, craft fur, and of course googly eyes for the rest.  If you have a cat as a pet, your sweater should say MEOWY Christmas!

The Mitten

Jan Brett is one of my favorite authors.  I used her version of the folktale The Mitten to adapt a flannel board story.  I made a large white mitten out of felt and drew and colored the animals onto white foam paper, with sticky velcro on the back.  As each animal "enters" the mitten, you can see how crowded the mitten ends up getting!  I like snowy winter stories for this time of the year because it reminds us of the coziness of the season.  And as I have stated before, I love a story that lends itself to visual adaptation.  It really helps to have visual props especially when storytelling to a large audience, like I do in my storytimes, where I have up to 75 little viewers!