July 12th: What Do You See?
We had fourteen kids today of varying ages at the storytime- the most we have had in attendance yet! There were quite a few new faces, so I reintroduced myself and the bookmobile to the community before starting with the first story. I began with a story about a lending animal zoo geared toward older kids. Then everyone got up with me to go on a safari game I made up called “What do you see?” In the game, I would have all the kids march in place until I said stop. Next, I would point to one child ask them “what do you see?” They would tell me an animal, and everyone would act out that animal before we would repeat the process all over again. The kids all really got into their animal impersonations and the parents seemed to enjoy watching their kids play as well. After, the game we read another book, before we went into our craft time.
I decided to switch up the craft for the Sweetwater program. We made long binoculars out of paper towels rolls that were donated. The steps to decorate the binoculars were the same as the telescopes with the Summer Squires. The biggest difference was they just decorated two longer rolls with newspaper and then I would tape them together. This variation of the craft was more work and challenging but I had parents there to help the kids. I also had our teen volunteer Barbara who aided me in passing out materials and helping kids as needed. Moreover, since they were a smaller group so I could go around helping more than I would have been able to do at Summer Squires. The craft went a lot better here and was also less messy surprisingly, which may have been due to the fact their parents were there. The best part was then seeing all the kids look through their finished binoculars saying things like “I see you!”