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 […]
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 […]
Kids’ Writing Workshop: The Hero’s Journey
Published on :Last Friday July 15th our Kids’ Writing Workshop for ages 8-12 learned about the form and structure of the Hero’s Journey. We watched a video about how myths use a more-or-less twelve-step process that gets the audience identifying with and rooting for a hero. The video demonstrates how this journey […]
Family Storytime: Food!
Published on :Today’s theme was food, and all the kids got to hold shaker eggs. I did more books than usual. But even with the distraction of the eggs and more than the usual amount of reading, the group did very well! And I just had to share those books. Some themes […]
Infant and Toddler Storytimes: Food!
Published on :Today’s theme was food, and our tactile thing was shaker eggs. They’re shaped like eggs, and they have beans inside, so…. yeah! I did more books this time than usual. Some themes suggest so many good books I just can’t pick only two! We sang “Clap Everybody and Say Hello” […]
Programming a Cyborg
Published on :On 6/25/16 we had a special kind of computer class for 6-8 year-olds: one where kids learned about programming in an interactive, personal and funny way! Cyborg.EAN taught them how to program him to move and do things, and taught the kids how to use laptops to program Python 3 […]
Project Designation: Graphic Design for Tweens and Teens
Published on :For three weeks in June, a group of extremely smart and motivated teen girls came to Pasadena Public Library to teach kids between the ages of 10 and 14 how to do graphic design using free websites like Pixlr and using art media like pens, pencils, markers, scissors and more. […]