Category Archives: books

Storytime: Food for Thought

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Welcome back to StoryTime at the Union Township Branch! We had a busy year in 2012 and we’re looking forward to having just as many awesome events to tell you about this year.

To start out our New Year on the right foot, our first week of StoryTime was all about Food (because healthy eating is something we all should practice…for at least 2 weeks at the beginning of every year). We read:

food

You might remember, last year our Every Child Ready to Read program got a makeover and we changed some of the reading skills that we focus on during StoryTime. This week we featured Singing as our Early Literacy practice. Singing is a great way for kids to learn about language.; it changes the way they hear words and introduces them to rhyming words (which builds Phonological Awareness. Bam! two for one early literacy jackpot!) We sang and had our Silly Dance Contest to ‘Spaghetti Legs,’ a super fun song off of Jim Gill Sings The Sneezing Song and Other Contagious Tunes. The kids did an awesome job imagining what it would be like if their bodies were turned into spaghetti!

My FAVORITE part of StoryTime this week was an amazing flannel board that Ms. Cheryl made to go along with the poem ‘Ode to a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich’ from James Proimos’ book If I Were In Charge the Rules Would Be Different.

peanutbutter

Next week we have our regularly scheduled ToddlerTime (Wednesday and Thursday at 10:30)  and PreschoolTime (Wednesday and Thursday at 11:30) Both will feature stories about winter animals. Check out our calendar online for other upcoming programs and awesome events. Hope we see you at the Union Township Branch Library soon!

 

New Skippyjohn Jones Book

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 It’s time for a new Skippyjohn Jones book, Skippyjohn Jones and the Cirque de Ole! This series of picture books about a Siamese cat who thinks he’s a Chihuahua is adorable. The rhyming, rhythmic writing is fun to read and if my oldest nephew is a judge, giggle inducing to hear. In his latest adventure, Skippyjohn wants to perform his high wire act in the circus.

Book trailer.

 

StoryTime: Elephant and Piggie

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Hello everyone! Welcome back to story time at the Union Township Branch Library! After a brief break during the month of May to promote Summer Reading we are back!

During the month of June we are talking about our favorite animals, and for our first week Ms. Garria picked Elephants and Piggies (after all, she is a HUGE Mo Willems fan). As always, all three of our story times throughout the week were on the same subject but featured different stories and activities. Between Ms. Garria, Ms. Cheryl and myself we read quite a few!

Mrs. Garria made us a special flannel board about Five Clean and Dirty Pigs, with a rhyme that was sung to the tune of Five Green and Speckled Frogs: (Repeat for numbers 5-1)
Five pigs so squeaky clean
Cleanest you’ve ever seen
Wanted to go outside and play
Oink! Oink!
One jumped into the mud
Landed with a big THUD
Then there were four clean squeaky pigs!

Our kids enjoyed watching the Piggies on our flannel board go from clean to dirty, and they had a great time making their own version for our craft. Everyone got a piggie cut out to make a dirty as they wanted with brown paint and sponges.

Our current StoryTime session will run through July 19. We have All Ages StoryTime Wednesdays at 10:30 and Thursdays at 11:30 and ToddlerTime Thursdays at 10:30 (with a special Gaming session for older kids while their younger siblings are in ToddlerTime!)

Hope we see you soon!

Family Story Time: Stars

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Hello again! While Story Time at the Union Township Branch might have stopped for the month of May, we just started our new series of evening story hours. Family Night meets on the first Tuesday of every month at 6:45. Our goal is to allow families with weekday school and work conflicts a chance to enjoy stories. All ages are welcome at Family Night, and we highly encourage our visitors to wear their pajamas!

Our Summer Reading theme this year is Read: Morning, Noon and Night, so our evening Family Time themes are all about the night.

Our first session met Tuesday May 1st, and we talked about Celestial Bodies (the kids were very interested to learn that bit of fancy, grown-up lingo). We read lots of stories about the stars and moon:

Our last book, Stars had a great idea, which we used for our craft. It suggested that we make a star and keep it in our pockets for days that we don’t feel so shiny. So, all of our attendees got to make and personalize their very own star to keep in their pocket, as well as one to give away to their favorite person. (After all, while you should always share, you don’t want to give away YOUR star, because then you wouldn’t have one anymore!) I made mine a star-shaped magic wand, so that I could banish all bad days that dared to occur in my presence.

Family Night will be happening every month; we’ll meet again June 5, from 6:45-7:30 to talk about Things That go Bump in the Night! Come with the whole family, wear your PJ’s and bring your favorite stuffed friend to hear stories about creepy, crawly, spooky monsters and to make your very on pet monster to take home with you!

Register online here, or call the Union Township Branch at 513-528-1744 to save your spot! Remember to check out all of the awesome events happening at the Clermont County Public Libraries this summer for both children AND adults!

 

 

Family Book Club: Jumanji

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We had our first ever meeting of the Union Township Family Book Club a few weeks ago. We started the group as a way to encourage families to read together, both during the school year and over the summer. Our books are aimed at middle elementary age children, but we encourage families to read them together. Younger children would enjoy hearing the stories read to them and older children might enjoy reading it to them. Our books are excellent bedtimes stories, as well as good choices for students who have a time goal for daily reading.

Six families joined us for our inaugural meeting. They read the book Jumanji by Chris Van Allsberg before the meeting (Book Club members get to checkout the book for two months so that they have time for all the family members to read the story, either on their own or with each other). Then, we got together to talk about the book, make our very own board game to take home and to watch the 1995 film version of Jumanji. Afterwards, we compared the book to the film and discussed why the film makers might have changed various aspects of the plot.

When asked if they liked the book or movie better, our young reader’s responses were split between the two, with lots of fans of the illustrations in the book, and even more fans of the crazy monkeys in the movie. We talked about some of the themes of the book such as responsibility and the importance of following directions, and we also discussed what we would do if jungle animals invaded our houses. It was unanimously decided that if our little siblings were turned into a monkey it would be very, very cool.

For our next meeting on Saturday, June 30, we will be discussing The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a fantastic book by Brian Selznick.  While it looks terrifying at 550 pages, it is actually a novel in pictures as well as text, with a LARGE part of the book composed of beautiful pencil drawings. Lots of people have described it as a film in book form, which is great because we will be watching the movie Hugo as well. The story follows a young orphan, Hugo Cabret and his secret life living in the walls of a Paris train station. When Hugo’s life collides with a broken automaton, an eccentric, bookish girl, and the cold, old man who runs the toy shop in the station, he is caught up in a magical, mysterious adventure that could put all of his secrets in jeopardy.

We hope you can join us! Stop by the Union Township Branch to pick up a copy of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and don’t forget to sign your family up online, by phone (528-1744) or in person!

StoryTime: Ms. Garria’s Train of Thought

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We had StoryTime this week all planned out. Really, we did. Our session on Concepts is over and we’re moving on to a few weeks about People. Ms. Garria picked out lots of great stories for us about people, like Children Make Terrible Pets and The Boy who Cried Ninja (two of my favorites!).But then our morning shuttle arrived right before StoryTime and it had a copy of Mo Willems‘ new Pigeon book The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? in it.

Needless to say, EVERYTHING changes when a new Mo Willems book shows up. So, instead of having a session on People, we changed our plan and talked about Things That Are Alive. Now, normally, the books we read have some sort of common theme running through them, but this week it would be easy to think they have nothing at all in common with each other. But, if you follow Ms. Garria’s train of thought it all starts making sense. See if you can keep up:

Finally, we made our craft, a self-portrait collage that shows how we were feeling today (because we ended our stories with feelings AND things that are alive usually have feelings!).

In some strange and slightly twisted way, this new theme of ‘train of thought’ actually ties in with our Ready to Read early Literacy Skill for the week: Narrative Skills.

“Narrative skills is the ability to describe things or events and to tell and re-tell stories. Being able to talk about and explain what happens in a story helps children understand the meaning of what he or she is reading. Good narrative skills lead to good reading comprehension.

Parents can help children strengthen their narrative skills by allowing them to talk with you and by listening carefully when he or she talks or tells stories. Encourage interaction by asking open-ended questions, by asking children to tell about their day or an event or by asking them to tell you about the book instead of just listening to you read the story. Choose books that repeat or predict to encourage telling and retelling of the story or choose wordless books that allow children to tell the story. Encourage ‘picture walking’ – allow your child to retell the story using the illustrations as guides.”

We hope to see you next week at the Union Township Branch StoryTime!

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!

Attention Kids: Last Chance to Nominate Your Favorite Book

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The Buckeye Children’s Book Award is now seeking nominations for 2011. Ohio is the only state to have a statewide book award program nominated and voted on exclusively by students. Students may nominate their favorite books until March 10. The top five nominations in each category are announced by the end of March, so teachers, librarians and students can become familiar with the nominated books and read them throughout the spring and summer. Voting will take place from September 1 – November 10, and the winners will be announced on December 1.  Students may only nominate books by American authors, originally published in the previous 2 years. 

Have your local kindergartners through 8th graders go here to nominate a book:

 

Union Township Toddlertime à la carte

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Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? It was the Union Township toddlers at Toddlertime on February 9th and 10th.  We also practiced taking turns feeding shapes to a puppy puppet and building a giant pretend hamburger.  Our puppy feeding game was designed to improve their narrative skills by building on a rhyme we’d just heard.  We danced and listened to stories on a picnic blanket.  Our Wednesday class finished by crafting a necklace of food (Hurray for fine motor skills!) while our Thursday class honed their social skills during playgroup.  Our theme?  Mealtime and Narrative Skills, of course.

Each week we practice different literacy skills.  For example,  acting out stories or parts of them, having young children use their whole bodies, helps them internalize and understand what is happening in the story. We hope they will be able to tell the story back to you, especially their favorites, which they like to hear over and over again.

Drop into the Union Township Toddlertime – no registration required.  We meet Wednesdays and/or Thursdays at 10:30am.      February 16 and 17′s theme is playtime and letter knowledge - out comes the parachute.  On February 23rd and 24th, we celebrate bathtime and print awareness. The toddlers will be helping us give some dolls a bath… (Please wish Miss Garria and me luck!)