Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!  It's my favorite storytime of the year!  This year we read, Halloween Night by Marjorie Dennis Murray and One Witch by Laura Leuck.

For today's craft we made mummies.

We started with a plain black paper outline of a body and then we glued on strips of white crepe paper.

Then we added some googly eyes and, ta-da, we have a mummy!  

Pumpkin Storytime

This week at storytime, we talked about pumpkins.  The pumpkin themed storytimes are some of my favorites and the kids always seem to like them.  This year we read It's Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall and Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman.

Before I set the kids loose on their craft for the day, I invited them to feel the insides of a pumpkin I'd brought in.  I showed them all the guts inside and let them stick their hand in to feel it.  The ooey gooey pumpkin guts went well with today's craft.
For our craft today we painted pumpkin pictures, but not just any ordinary painting.  I whipped up a batch of puffy paint.  The puffy paint is wonderful and it looks like frosting, but best of all it dries just as puffy as when you first put it on.  I've seen several recipes for puffy paint on the internet but the one I've found works best is 1 cup of white glue, 1 cup of shaving cream, and food coloring.  Basically you just need equal parts glue and shaving cream but one cup of each makes a surprising amount.  I colored our paint orange and it looked awesome on our pumpkin pictures.

Here is a plastic bag full of paint I had left over.  

This is one of the finished pumpkin paintings.  This one is dry and it is still as puffy as when it was wet.

This week we were also lucky to have the preschool kids come over for a special storytime.  I read the same books to them but I came up with a different craft for this group.  I brought another pumpkin in for them to explore.  I invited them to put a hand inside the pumpkin and feel the guts and we talked about what the pumpkin innards looked like and felt like.  We discussed the seeds in the pumpkin and how the guts were stringy.  This was a great way to introduce today's preschool craft.  

  

 I gave each child a paper pumpkin with the words "What is inside?" written on it.  I set out dried pumpkin seeds and orange and yellow yarn that they glued on the inside, just like the inside of our real pumpkin.

Here's a quick note on drying pumpkin seeds.  It was kind of hard to find a recipe for drying pumpkin seeds and not roasting them to eat.  So I figured I'd share what I did to just dry them out and not toast them.  I set my oven for 250 degrees and spread the seeds out on a tin foil lined cookie sheet.  I cooked my seeds for about an hour and a half, stirring them every half hour.

Skeleton Storytime

This week we read about skeletons.  I like to dedicate most of my October storytimes to all things Halloween.  There are so many great Halloween books and crafts and I like to get in the spirit.  Today's skeleton theme was really fun and it was a great opportunity to talk about what a skeleton actually is.  We all felt our rib bones and I pointed the ribs out in the picture of the skeleton in the book.
Today's books were, Skeleton for Dinner by Margery Cuyler and Skeleton Hiccups also by Margery Cuyler.

Today's craft involved making a skeleton out of Q-Tips.  I printed off a skeleton head for each child and then showed them how I'd glued on the Q-Tips to make the rest of the skeleton's body.

Here's the one I did to show them.

 And here are a few that the kids made. 

I think they turned out pretty great! 

Fall Leaves

Today's storytime was all about fall and the beautiful leaves we see changing color all around town.  I drove around looking for the best leaves to harvest for today's storytime craft.

We read Fancy Nancy and the Fall Foliage by Jane O'Connor and Leaves by David Ezra Stein

Today's craft was all about the leaves.  I rolled out some contact paper on the tables and taped the edges down.  On a separate table, I spread out all the leaves I'd collected.  I showed the kids the clear, sticky contact paper and explained that we were going to make beautiful fall leaves sun-catchers by pressing the leaves onto the sticky contact paper and hanging it in the window.  

I hung the sheets in the library windows and when the sun shines through the leaves, it creates a very pretty glow.  I like inviting the children to help us decorate the library.  They love coming in and seeing their own work hung on the walls, or in this case, the windows.