Children's Story Hour

As a new" librarian", it is always interesting to take on new projects. One of the young mothers who regularly brings her daughter to the library asked me if I had ever thought about having a children's story hour at the library. I told her that I had but I just had not had enough time to get the project going. She offered to help me and so the Children's Story Hour began on Saturday November 22. This young mom had suggested that with winter coming that children would be happy to have an event to attend indoors. I scheduled two story hours to see how well it will be received and then after the second one, I will decide if it should be done more than once a month. Someone asked me if I would be doing a Hungarian children's story hour and I think I would have to recruit someone to be the reader in that case. Although, as a side note, we did start taking Hungarian lessons this past week, so maybe that would be a good way to practice what I am learning. I think that is still in the future quite a ways.

We had about 20 children and their mothers come last Saturday and they were an enthusiastic group. I really enjoyed their spontaneity and the reactions to all that we did. My young friend and I had found an idea of making turkeys from leaves and pine cones and so I had been picking up a variety of leaves as I have been out walking. The pine cones were not quite so plentiful and I thought perhaps I was not going to find any. I always like to do a project ahead of time to see what the problems might be and so the night before ( oh, yes, procrastination is still in my vocabulary) I put one together. I found it very difficult to get the leaves to stick to the paper and the pine cones did not stick at all, unless I used a lot of Elmer's glue. The age range that i targeted was 2 - 8, and so I decided this was not a project that was workable in a short amount of time. So on to plan B. Plan B was leaf rubbings, since I had lots of leaves and that actually worked very well. It seemed that even the older children weren't not really familiar with this technique and so they were interested and of course, did more than one page.

One of the stories that I read was Parable of the Pumpkin Patch and it tells the story of the farmer planting the seeds and watching the vine grow and then at the end, carving the pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern. In Hungary, what they call pumpkins look more like a very orange butternut squash. I had bought one and before I read the story, I asked the children what the pumpkin was and most of them called it a squash. So I read the story and then took them to the kitchen to cut open the pumpkin and let them see the seeds and the squishy stuff that holds the seeds together. Oh, it was so great to hear their reactions! My farm background is good for something! After they made their leaf rubbings, I brought them back to the kitchen for pumpkin bread and juice. It was a hit! I also promised that I would roast the pumpkin seeds and when they came to the library the next time, they could try the roasted pumpkin seeds.

As I mentioned, I wasn't sure that I was going to find any pine cones, because I had been looking as I was out walking. The only place I had seen some was across a fence, in a private yard and I really didn't think I should just go into the yard and help myself. That was one of the reasons that Merrill and I went up to the Citadella a couple of weeks ago. We did find pine cones there on some of the trees and a few on the ground. I decided that I would keep the pine cones even though I didn't used them for that project. With Christmas coming, sometimes it is good to have some of those things for decorations.

In the library, I also found a book that is called Story Stretchers and has projects like we did at the story hour. It mentions at least 4 books for every story hour and gives a variety of things to go along with the book. That is a real blessing to me, not being a teacher or a librarian! Now if I could just find a book about bulletin board ideas! I have looked on line but not found a site yet that has given me the ideas I would like to use. There are a lot of websites that are useful. I am in the creating phase for the next story hour, next week!