On Friday, Sept. 23 in our Kids’ Writing Workshop for children ages 8-12, we played something called “The Erasmus Game,” which I got to learn from PCC professor and YA author E. Katherine Kottaras. This exercise is based on Chapter 33 of the book Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style […]
A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea: Creative Writing for Beginning Readers
Published on :This month’s Creative Writing for Beginning Reader’s workshop (for ages 5-8) was inspired by the book A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea by Michael Ian Black and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes. It’s a hilarious picture book that is all about contrasting the bright, shiny parade in the narrator’s imagination: […]
Roald Dahl 100
Published on :We had 45 people come to our Roald Dahl 100 Celebration on Tuesday, September 13th, the centennial of Roald Dahl’s birth! Mr. Nick told us all about Dahl’s life and how his life sometimes inspired his fiction and his writing style. We did a quiz, a word search, and a […]
Kids’ Writing Workshop with Tracy Holczer
Published on :On Friday, August 26, we had Tracy Holczer here at the Pasadena Public Library children’s story room to teach creative writing to kids aged 8-12. Tracy Holczer wrote the gorgeous middle grade novel The Secret Hum of a Daisy. We discussed lots of things: reading, how to write a good […]
Books! Books! Books! Storytime
Published on :We started storytime today with Clap Your Hands and told a story with puppets, based on Book! Book! Book! by Deborah Bruss and illustrated by Tiphanie Beeke. All the animals at the farm are bored because the kids are back in school, so they go to the public library and […]
Curiosity Machine: Build a Balanced Dinosaur
Published on :On Thursday, August 25th, while the rest of the library was closed early, kids and their parents were hanging out here in the children’s Story Room learning about paleontology and center of gravity, and building their own dinosaurs! I showed a slide show about how scientists’ concepts of dinosaurs has […]
Creative Writing for Beginning Readers: The Wonderful World of Poems with Cassidy Kao
Published on :On August 9, 2016, a young self-published poet named Cassidy Kao, age 10, taught our Creative Writing for Beginning Readers class for kids between 5 and 8 years old. She explained four different kinds of poems to us and then the kids worked individually with their parents to write their […]
Toddler Storytime: Potty
Published on :In Toddler Storytime this week I tried something new: a potty-training theme! We started with Clap Everybody and Say Hello and our Scarf Song and Peekaboo: Then we read a book with pop art/comic book style illustrations called I Use the Potty by Maria van Lieshout. The format lends itself […]
Infant Storytime: Bedtime
Published on :In Infant Storytime on Tuesday we did some bedtime stories, and talked about going to sleep and waking up. We started with our Opening Song Clap Everybody and Say Hello, and our Scarf Song. We also waved our scarves gently to the rhythm of the nursery rhyme Rockabye Baby. Then […]
Infant and Toddler Storytimes: Feelings
Published on :We started our storytime today with scarves, and sang a song: One bright scarf waiting for the wind to blow Toss it up high and wave it down low Wiggle it fast and wiggle it slow (hide the scarf) Hey! Where did it go? (Source: adapted from a song found […]