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 […]
Mother Daughter Book Club: A Snicker of Magic
Published on :Tonight’s Mother Daughter Book Club discussed the book A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd, a magical realism book about a contemporary girl who has an extraordinary ability to see words everywhere that other people don’t see. It’s also about a charming Tennessee town which fell under a curse and […]
Creative Writing for Beginning Readers: Imaginary Friends
Published on :On July 1st, we had a program for early elementary school kids from ages 5-8 years old to encourage them to do creative writing. Miss AnnMarie prepared the materials and Mr. Nick did a wonderful job presenting it. Mr. Nick read two books: The Adventures of Beekle, The Unimaginary Friend […]
Kids’ Writing Workshop: Writing Engaging Beginnings
Published on :This month our workshop focused on that cardinal rule of writing: hook ’em with your first sentence! The activities we did got the kids writing actual first sentences and getting feedback from their peers. Here’s the handout I gave the kids. I’m a big believer in drawing inspiration from current, […]
Summer Reading Kickoff: Read to the Rhythm!
Published on :We had forty participants at our Kickoff program to our Summer Reading Challenge! Families came to our Studio On 4th to dance, make musical instruments and rock out! Here’s a video of some of the highlights of the program: We had a Wii set up for dancing: We made […]
The Science of Making Music
Published on :This afternoon we had a program at Pasadena Library about how to make a musical instrument–something that would produce not just noise, but definite pitches that you could change or manipulate. We learned about aerophones, chordophones, idiophones and membranophones, and then got a chance to make our own DIY instruments. […]
Tablets and Tech for Kids: an iPad toys open house!
Published on :We had a fun tech program for kids yesterday, a kind of open house for the iPad apps and toys we have acquired! We played with Wonder Workshop robots and Osmo game systems, toys that extend the two-dimensional screen of the iPad to three-dimensional play. Kids and parents had a lot […]