@ Your Library
It is MEA weekend, so no school until next Monday. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t engage your children in a discussion each day about something of interest to you, to them or to the world. Encourage them to think through something they believe, does it hold up, what are other viewpoints and how are the viewpoints different. Personal experience has let me discover that children actually behave better and are nicer people when their brains are active and being used. So enjoy some down time with flexible schedules but don’t spend the entire weekend checked out and not thinking. Spend five – ten minutes each day pondering and discussing and discovering something new.
Do you and your family decorate the house and yard for Halloween? Looking for some new ideas to try? Check out our collection of Halloween decorating ideas including Give Them a Real Scare this Halloween by Joseph Pfeiffer, Spooky Halloween Crafts by Susan Cousineau, Halloween: a grownup guide to creative costumes, devilish décor and fabulous festivities by Joanne O’Sullivan. And if you want new and creative ideas for decorating pumpkins try the suitably titled Pumpkin Decorating by Vicki Rhodes cute and scary ideas.
It is also not too early to think about gift giving during the holidays. Make some decisions about what your kids could make to give family members and get started on creating. Here are some great books with ideas aplenty for cool, delightful and fun gifts to give. The junior room has a fun collection of titles to encourage creativity and ideas for gift-giving. Try a learn to knit or crochet book and let the kids crochet or knit scarves, animals, socks and more. Kids Crochet by Kelli Ronci and Knit, Hook and Spin by Laurie Carlson are two to look at.
Martha Stewart’s Favorite Crafts for Kids includes 175 projects to create, build, design, explore and share. If you or your children are more interested in creating stories to share whether entirely written or written and drawn then take a look at the Adventures in Cartooning by James Sturm, the visit www.mnwritesmnreads.org for access to Pressbooks which will help you create a professional looking digital book that can be saved in a variety of formats and printed. A cool new book with really fun projects is Now Make This: 24 DIY projects by Designers for Kids, including a bucket drum set, sock puppets, a magic mirror and more. The Paper Playhouse by Katrina Rodabaugh provides ‘Awesome Art Projects for Kids using Paper, Boxes, and Books.’
Older kids might enjoy Crazy Cool Duct Tape Projects by Marisa Pawelko or the Big Book of Weekend Beading with ‘step-by-step instructions for 30+ quick beading projects.’ If you and your children have another interest that you’d like to explore for creating, let us know and we can probably find something.
Storytime on Thursday, October 18 at 10:30 will focus on stories about dinosaurs. Preschool age children and their caregivers are welcome to come and roar about dinosaurs.