Author Archives: Laura S

Lego Club Rocks!

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Hi! It was a huge Block Party at the Union Township Branch on March 31st; this past month we had tremendous success with our first ever Lego Club. We knew it was going to be a great day when we ran out of space in our original session and had to add a second morning session after just two weeks of sign-ups.

Over 90 kids registered to attend, with 3o in each session and another 30 on the waiting list. Due to our huge numbers we had to combine our Lego collection with the Amelia Branch’s bricks to make sure that we had enough for everyone (Thanks Ms. Cara for sharing)! Everyone in the room had their creative caps on; parents tried their best to watch from the sideline, but it was hard for them to not hunker down on the floor with the kids and build. Our builders made over 100 unique creations over the course of the day, using their brains and some of the awesome Lego books we have in the system.

We started our class with some free building while we waited for everyone to arrive. After that we did a series of individual and team oriented building challenges, including building robots, our favorite animals (a surprising number of kids picked giraffes), a building (it couldn’t be a house), vehicles and ‘the most awesome thing’ the kids could think of.

Everyone had an great time and the creativity was astounding. Check out pictures of some of our creations at the CCPL Flickr page, where we have our very own Union Township Lego Club photo collection.

Our Lego Club meets the last Saturday of every other month at 10:00 and 2:00. To save your spot at one of the May 26th Block Parties, call the Union Township Branch at 513-528-1744 or register online through our Calendar of Events. Busy on May 26? Check out the Amelia Branch for their Lego Club, which alternates months with ours.

StoryTime: Shapes

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my heart is like a zooThis week at the Union Township StoryTime we talked about one of the very best concepts- Shapes! Seeing and recognizing the shapes that make up everything around us is not only an amusing game you can play with your kids, it’s also huge step on the road to Early Literacy. One of the six skills that can help you children learn to read is Letter Recognition, and a big part of spotting the differences in various letters is being able to see the shapes that they are made of. Knowing that an A is a triangle and an O is a circle is a big deal, trust me!

All of our books we read this week dealt with our various shapes, including some of my favorites; hearts, circles and squares. We read:

For our craft we made collages and pictures out of circles, and as always we had a few coloring sheets that we made up. We also had some great flannel boards; our Preschool Time had a visit from the Shape Monster, who promptly ate all the shapes we had brought out to show the kids and at Toddler Time we played a game with our felt shapes, first spotting the shapes on the board and then later shapes we found around the room. The game has a song that goes like this:

I Can See Shapes
Tune: London Bridge
I can see a circle shape,
circle shape, circle shape.
I can see a circle shape.
How about you?

I can see a triangle,
a triangle, a triangle.
I can see a triangle.
How about you?

I can see a little square,
little square, little square.
I can see a little square.
How about you?

I can see a rectangle,
rectangle, rectangle.
I can see a rectangle.
How about you?

As always we had a great time this week at the Union Township Branch StoryTimes, I hope you can join us next week!

StoryTime: Getting Dressed

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New socksWe’re still having a blast at Story Time here at Union Township. This week our ‘Concept’ was one of my favorites, Getting Dressed. All of our books had to do with clothing, like hats, socks and purple dresses.

Our Ready to Read literacy skill this week was Print Awareness (which is basically learning how to notice the printed word all around us), and our books had some really awesome fonts to help grab the kids attention and pull them into the books. We read:

Ms. Garria made us a very cool flannel board based on the book Let’s Play in the Forest While the Wolf is Not Around by Claudia Rueda. For our craft we used our die cut machine to make paper dolls with interchangeable outfits.

Since we had talked about colors last week, we played a super fun I-Spy game I remember from my childhood about the clothes that everyone had on AND what colors they were. It goes like this:
Red, red is the color I see
If you’re wearing red, then show it to me!
Stand up, take a bow, turn around
Then sit back down right on the ground!
(Additional colors: blue, black, brown, purple, pink, white)

Of course, we always have our traditional Silly Dance Contest from the CD Jim Gill Sings the Sneezing Song and Other Contagious Tunes as well as play time at the end of our craft.

I hope you can join us next time!

Story Time: Opposites

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You and Me: We're Opposites
Story time is back at Union Township and going strong!

This session we are working on ‘Concepts’, which is sometimes a hard concept to grasp (pun totally intended).  Our ‘concept’ last week was Opposites, which tied in nicely with our literacy skill of Vocabulary. (Don’t know about the Ready to Read Initiative’s Six Skills? Check them out for some great hints on helping your kids get on the road to reading!)

Some of the books we read this time were:

We learned lots of cool new words, including comparative adjectives (fancy, I know!) such as far, farther, farthest and short, shorter, shortest, as well lots and lots of opposite words like near-far, big-small, left-right and hello-goodbye. Our craft and our coloring sheet also had fun opposites on them.

We also did a variety of flannel board rhymes and finger rhymes during story time. If you’re playing along at home, try singing this flannel board song and substituting other location oriented opposite pairs. (Click here to see the image of the flannel board).

The Penguin Went Over the Iceberg
The penguin went over the iceberg,
The penguin went over the iceberg,
The penguin went over the iceberg,
To see what he could see.

To see what he could see,
To see what he could see.

The left side of the iceberg,
The right side of the iceberg,
The left side of the iceberg,
Was all that he could see.

Was all that he could see,
Was all that he could see,
The other side of the iceberg,
Was all that he could see!

You can also try doing some of the following rhymes with your children to get them ready to hear some stories.

Taller, Smaller
When I stretch up, I feel so tall;
When I bend down, I feel so small.
Taller, taller, taller, taller;
Smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller,
Into a tiny ball
Big, Bigger, Biggest
A little ball, (make ball with finger and thumb)
A bigger ball, (make ball with two hands)
And a great big ball I see. (make a ball with arms)
Now help me count them,
One, two, three! (repeat gestures for each size)

 

Thanks for stopping by to see what’s going on at Story Time!