On Friday, our Kids’ Writing Workshop discussed the elements that give a writer his or her unique “voice.” Voice is a difficult thing to define, but we read a capable definition of it in this article by Dave Hood: Developing Your Writing Voice. Hood writes that voice is composed of […]
Infant & Toddler Storytime: Chickens
Published on :For the last storytime of our Summer Infant and Toddler Session, we shared stories about chickens! Books We Shared With so many new friends made through ten weeks of storytime, it seemed fitting to start infant storytime with Pepo and Lolo are Friends by Ana Martín Larrañaga. The pig and chick are […]
Infant & Toddler Storytime: Bedtime
Published on :I’m a little behind in posting about my Summer Infant & Toddler storytimes. This one was presented on August 11, and we had stories all about bedtime! Books We Shared In infant storytime, we began things with a new book by Elizabeth McPike and Patrice Barton called Little Sleepyhead. This […]
Family Storytime: Starting School!
Published on :Today’s storytime celebrated school, which kids in our local public schools have already started, and kids in our private schools are starting soon! We started with the song “Clap Your Hands” and then read the book Llama Llama Misses Mama by Anna Dewdney. In the book, our little llama is […]
Scratch for Experienced Users: FlappyBat!
Published on :On Friday August 14th we made videogames using Scratch. Our games were based on the infamous “Flappy Bird” videogame that brought its creators notoriety and established them in the halls of memorable bad game design forever 🙂 We followed a tutorial I created and chose new sprites for our flappy […]
Playing records with no electricity!
Published on :Monday’s hands-on science program, “The Science Behind Recording Music,” challenged tweens to come up with several iterations of a gramophone that could play the sound stored on a vinyl record with only their hands to power it. First tweens learned about the history of sound recording and its great inventors, then we […]
Craig Newton’s Really Big Music Show
Published on :On August 8th, 2015 we had a special guest, Craig Newton, put on a music show for families in our Donald Wright Auditorium! He brought a ton of instruments and demonstrated them all to the kids, teaching them about how musical instruments work, as well as giving them exercises in […]
Meet the kids’ grand prize winner for Central Library!
Published on :The Central Library’s Children’s Summer Reading Challenge winner is Diego, a kindergartener who completed his whole reading game board and then was randomly selected to take home our squishable Porter the Polar Bear. Here he is with his prize: And here’s Angela Arzu, manager of Youth Services, congratulating him and presenting him […]
Creative Writing for Beginning Readers: Bookworm Books!
Published on :This month’s Creative Writing for Beginning Readers class took inspiration from the book Violet and Victor Write the Best-Ever Bookworm Book by Alice Kuipers and illustrated by Bethany Murguia. It’s a very cute book about a boy and a girl who make up a story about a bookworm who slips […]
Kids’ Writing Workshop with Kirk Scroggs!
Published on :Last Friday our Kids’ Writing Workshop welcomed author Kirk Scroggs, who wrote the Wiley & Grampa’s Creature Features series, the Snoop Troop series and the Tales of a Sixth-Grade Muppet series. He gave us a presentation about his books and characters, and then we did activities where we took a […]