Wee Dance! Party - April

I had another Wee Dance! Party this morning, and it went very well.  They were a very well-behaved group, which was good because I was trying something new that could have gotten a little crazy with a bigger or wilder group.

Today's Wee Dance! was about bears, partially because my manager Abby gave me a new book called Tiptoe Joe by Ginger Foglesong Gibson.  This book worked great for Wee Dance!  It features animals moving and making noise in different ways: an owl goes "swish swish," a donkey goes "clop clop," etc.  I also chose bears because I wanted to try the famous action song, "We're Going on a Bear Hunt."



Now, traditionally, the participants go on a bear hunt in order to "catch a big one," and when the bear is finally spotted in a cave, the participants scream and run (in place) back the way they came.  I wanted to attempt the bear hunt for its action elements and review of prepositions, but I had to tweak it for two reasons.  First, I wanted to actually move around the room instead of just doing actions in place, and second, I didn't want kids to scream and freak out and start running everywhere.  So in my version, we were looking for my friend, Benny the Bear (a black bear puppet), and we encountered a "bump in the road" (rolled up tablecloth) to go over, a "tall forest" (two stand-up signs) to go through, and a "big hill" (large table) to go under.  This worked great!  And everyone got to hug Benny when we found him.

The other elements I used were the books Make a Wish, Bear (by Greg Foley) and This is My Dance: A Move-to-It Book (by Susan James - a board book), and the songs "Dance with Your Teddy Bear" (from Jumpin' and Jammin' by Greg and Steve) and "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" (from Wee Sing 25th Anniversary Collection by Pamela Beall).





One thing that really helped control the kids this time was that I made a line on the floor with blue painter's tape, and with me on one side, they had to stay on the other.  Normally, I get a crowd of kids who creep closer and closer to me as we go, and it gets harder to hold a book for them to see or demonstrate a dance move.  I will definitely be using the painter's tape again!

ILF District 6 Conference

This past Friday I was at the annual conference for District 6 of the Indiana Library Federation.  It was a great time!  The library in North Vernon, IN was really spacious and lovely.  The keynote speaker at the conference was Michael Cart, a writer and former library director in Beverly Hills, CA.  He had some great stories about celebrities and some interesting insights on the current status and future of young adult literature.  Even though it was a small event compared to the larger library conferences that I've been to in the past, there was also still a great variety of breakout sessions.

I went to one session put on by Baker & Taylor (our book vendor) where they described their new platform for ebooks and e-audio.  It seems like a really cool program, so I'll be interested to see if we decide our library should have it.  My next session was about the Common Core standards being implemented in Indiana schools.  It was mostly intended for school librarians, but they did give a lot of resources for meeting the new standards that could be useful for us.

My third breakout session, about storytimes incorporating dance and music, was probably the most useful to me.  I got a lot of ideas for Wee Dance! Parties.  I've already been thinking about doing a "Going on a Bear Hunt" activity, and one of the ideas presented was to tape out a path on the floor for a similar game.  I also can't wait to try out some adult music (like the Beatles or Motown), play "keep the beach ball in the air," use our beanbags and rhythm sticks more, try freeze dancing, do the limbo, and cut out pretend steering wheels from paper plates to use with some sort of car song.  It'll be so fun!

The final session I went to was about using an online system for a summer reading program.  Like the library the speakers were from, we will be using Evanced.  I think it will make things really streamlined to use Evanced for registering and recording patron's reading, so I'm looking forward to it.  I haven't experienced a summer reading program at this library before, though, so I'm not quite sure what to expect!

Little ones and screentime

I just finished reading this article in The Atlantic called "The Touch-Screen Generation," and it's really making me think about the relationship children today have with technology and what their caregivers and other adults should do about it.  As a children's librarian, anything about kids and media immediately has my attention and concern.  In grad school we talked a lot about the recommendation by the American Society of Pediatrics that children under age two have NO passive screentime.  And then after age two, we want them to be doing really educational things, right?

Maybe.  I love the argument that this article made for the concept of play.  I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't see the value of play for children, but I haven't often heard that value be ascribed to technological play as well.  And why not?  If an app that allows a toddler to build virtual towers out of virtual blocks follows the laws of physics, is that not reinforcing these physics concepts?  And if the app intentionally disregards physics and allows blocks to fly through the air, does that not stimulate imagination?  I'd never heard of some of the open-ended apps the article mentions (such as those from Toca Boca), but they sound like a great example of exploratory play.  Just learning to navigate with a tablet or other technology may also be invaluable for whatever field of study or career the child might one day begin.

Is there such a thing as too much tech time?  Of course.  I still think life is about balance, and just as kids of yesteryear were told they shouldn't read books ALL day everyday and should go outside and run around for a while, so I think it's smart for today's parents to say, "That's enough iPad time for right now; go play catch with your sister and you can come back to it later."  As the article points out, though, kids probably know this for themselves already or can learn it.  As awesome as the iPad is, eventually a kid will get sick of it just as he or she gets sick of any other toy.

The one thing about technology is that I hope it doesn't become a way for parents to spend less time with their kids than they already do.  I wouldn't want a parent to think that handing the kid an iPad with "educational" games is the equivalent of spending quality time with them.  Now, I'm not a parent, but I'm sure there are times when parents need a break and some high-quality apps can provide that for them.  But there's a difference between taking a break for a little bit and relying on technology to teach and interact with your children.

I hope that tablets and their apps become just one more aspect of children's lives, alongside and with approximately equal weight to books, music, movies, dramatic play, sports and games, nature, puzzles, conversation, and art.  Nothing more and nothing less.

Wee Dance! Party

Well, my New Year's resolution to write in this blog regularly lasted all of a week, but I'm going to try again. A lot has happened in the last few months.  Today I wanted to write about a program I've been doing once a month.  I call it Wee Dance! Party.

Wee Dance! is a nontraditional storytime that involves a lot of action and movement.  I do use 2-4 books in each program, but the books are specially chosen to encourage moving along with the story.  We might stretch up high to the sky, bend over and touch our toes, slither like a snake, or jump for joy!  I also incorporate a lot of music: singing, playing instruments, and listening to CDs from our collection.  Really any activity that keeps the kids up and moving is welcome in Wee Dance!  We warm up at the beginning and cool down at the end, with some combination of stretching, shaking out our body parts, or assuming some kid-friendly yoga poses.

There are a few props/activities that I've used repeatedly in Wee Dance!  One of them is our "song cube" that Miss T made for our department.  It's a cardboard cube that acts as a giant die with pictures on each face that relate to a common children's song.  For example, one face has a picture of a spider for "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," and one has a boat for "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."  I also bring out the scarves for dancing with, throwing, or just twirling around.  Finally, everyone's favorite part seems to be the jingle bells that we shake along to uptempo music or use with an activity.

The theme for my first Wee Dance! was animals.  This is an easy one because every kid loves to run/crawl/wiggle/waddle like their favorite animal.  The books I used were Dancing Feet! by Lindsey Craig, Rattlesnake Dance by Jim Arnosky, and You Are a Lion! And Other Fun Yoga Poses by Taeeun Yoo.  I also played a couple of the songs from the book/CD Rhinoceros Tap.









My second Wee Dance! Party fell on Valentine's Day, so my theme was "I Love You."  My favorite thing that we did for this was to listen to the song "L-O-V-E" by Nat King Cole and spell out the letters in "love" with our bodies, YMCA-style.  I also passed out heart-shaped pieces of felt and asked the kids to put their heart on their head/arm/belly/nose/etc.  Since we always have to bring out the bells (they love them!), I also asked them to ring their bells if they love cookies/their family/cleaning up their toys/getting sick/etc.

The one song that we sang was "Skinnamarinky Dinky Dink":

Skinnamarinky dinky dink, skinnamarinky doo, I love you!
Skinnamarinky dinky dink, skinnamarinky doo, I love you!
I love you in the morning and in the afternoon,
I love you in the evening and underneath the moon!
Oh, skinnamarinky dinky dink, skinnamarinky doo, I love you!

The three books I read were Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney, And I Love You by Ruth Krauss, and I Love You Because You're You by Liza Baker.  I had also pulled My Heart is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall because I thought we could act like each of the animals, but we didn't get to it.









Finally, my most recent Wee Dance! Party was on body parts, which turned out to be a GREAT theme.  The activities we did worked with lots of different ages, from toddlers to elementary schoolers.  I brought out the scarves as usual and we used them to throw and catch them on different body parts (hand/head/knee/back) and to pass them around our heads, between our legs, etc.  This way we were practicing prepositions as well as the names of body parts.

I found a few songs on CDs on our collection that really guide you through a movement activity, whether it's shaking different body parts or touching different body parts to each other.  We grooved along to "Move Your Body" and "Head and Shoulders" from the CD Jump and Sing: Binyah's Favorite Songs, "The Body Part Game" from the Greg & Steve CD Shake, Rattle, and Rock, and "Body Talk" and "The Body Rock" from Greg & Steve's Kids in Motion.

The books I read for this one were Hop, Hop, Jump! by Lauren Thompson, All of Me!: A Book of Thanks by Molly Bang, a pop-up book called If You're Happy and You Know It by David A. Carter, and Little Yoga by Rebecca Whitford and Martina Selway.









I'm excited to continue doing this program!  It's tons of fun and good to get the kids (and me!) moving and exercising.  It takes a little time to come up with the right books and activities, but there are also parts that we repeat each time, so the planning becomes less and less time-consuming.  I would definitely recommend for any library to add this to occasional programming - I think once a month works well, but you may even be able to do it weekly!  I hope this helps someone!