Wild Rumpus

         This is a picture of the forest I made for our Wild Rumpus celebration of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. Almost everything I used it recycled materials. The tree trunks were crumpled up packaging material from Tech Services DVD shipments that I stapled up to the walls. The leaves are made from newspaper and are actually 3D and puff out of the walls. I made them puffy by stuffing them with the contents of the various shredders scattered throughout the library. I spray painted on the base color and then used Tempura poster paint to create the highlights and then I layered them and stapled up. The boat is made from paper off giant paper rolls and I painted on the details. The sails are made out of the same paper and and I used yarn to create the ropes. The waves are recycled newspaper and upcycled tablecloths from a past party. 

           This is my coworker and I dressed up as "Wild Things" for the party. We invited the kids to come dressed in their favorite "mischief-causing, rumpus-rousing outfits." My favorite was probably the full on Flash costume one of our regular 4 year olds came in. We read Sendak's tale and sang "If you're a Monster and you know it" with the kids (song version of Rebecca Emberley's "If You're a Monster and You Know It" book). We then made lunch paper bag monsters with pipe cleaners and scrap paper. We finished up with a snack of "Worms 'n Dirt" (Oreo crumbles, chocolate pudding, and Gummy worms) and "Slimeade" (Lime green lemonade). It was definitely a big hit! 

Elmer Concentration Game

This Summer we read Elmer by David McKee as a part of our "Wish" week for Summer Reading. For our craft we made elephant mosaics out of crepe paper, but for our activity I created a concentration game of Elmer the Elephant and his friends. I found a blank elephant template online of Elmer and created multiples in publisher to print out. I then took colored pencils and created 12 very distinct elephants that we copied and printed out onto card stock to create the playing cards. We then took some of our stockpiled cardboard flats that we turned into the game boards creating a large grid of 24 squares (4x6) on each flat. We played 4 kids to each grid. The idea of the game was to have the elephants flipped facing down and the kids flipped over two at a time in search of matching pairs, the child with the most pairs wins. It's a really easy game to create with any pictures. I chose to make the elephants as different as possible to limit any discrepancies with what elephant went with what elephant. The kids absolutely loved the game! It'll definitely be a repeat game for programs to come!