Week 7 - Scary Monsters!?!? AKA Cupcake Madness! with the Little Einsteins!

Mrs. Giles playing some silly monster games with the Little Einsteins and special Guest Spiderman!

So this Tuesday marked our last visit from the Little Einsteins for the Summer Reading Club! Rhonda went all out with the stories, crafts and snacks for this one! And wow! There were a lot of Little Einsteins for today! We had 19 kids and their parents/guardians join us in the morning, and what a lovely day it was!

Little Veronica roaming the shelves

Rhonda started things of choosing some classic songs from her usual repertoire of kids' songs! Then moved on to some games she had prepared that went along with our theme for the week!

After their singing and once the kids had settled into their seats once again Rhonda went on to read a couple of monster books to the kids!

It's so fun to watch Rhonda reading to the kids, the Little Einsteins totally soak it all in and Rhonda is so animated and fun!

One of the books she read through was a Sesame Street book from Grover called "The Monster at the End of this Book". This book is ridiculously hilarious! The first page starts with Mr. fuzzy Grover heeding a warning to the reader, and totally breaking the 4th wall, that their is a monster at the end of this book! :O And Grover warns you, don't turn the page! If you don't turn the page well, then you won't have to see the monster! Right?

Seriously I need an adult size version of that Spiderman hoodie, adorable!

But no no no, Rhonda turned the page, and AH! that definitely makes Grover very anxious and border-line mad!

It's hilarious and the kids loved it! Every page would end with NO! DON'T TURN THE PAGE!!!!! and Rhonda would ask, "Well, should we turn the page!?" to which the kids would all scream "YES!"

In desperation, Grover tried blocking the reader from turning the page, he ties string and even cement bricks the pages, but nothing can withhold the screams and commands of the Little Einsteins!

On and on it went and I won't spoil the story for you! Try looking for it at your local library! I know we don't have it at our library at the mo' but after reading Rhonda's copy of it during the Little Einstein program, we just might be ordering in our own copy for the Beaver Valley Public Library! Hurray!

After our Strange meeting on Sesame Street, Rhonda moved on to a Mo Willems book called "Leonardo, the Terrible Monster"

The story follows Leonardo, who is a young monster who is terrible at scaring people, and this makes him quite sad. This is a great story about friendship and kindness! Such a lovely book!

After Leonardo's story Rhonda played some games with the kids, which included using the felt board to create some fearsome and terrible monsters!

And another game which involved trusting our Little Einsteins to close their eyes, as a monster was hidden under a certain coloured bed. Once the monster was securely hidden, eyes were opened and the hunt for the monster began!

Seriously though, how adorable is Cohen in his little Spiderman hoodie! Love it! 

Then it was time for mingling and crafts! Tuesday's craft was so cute! Rhonda choose to make foam monster visors with the kids! And apart from some gluing trouble, the visors were a huge success!

Here's little Corbin with his finished chapeau!

After putting on their monster visors, our library was full of little monsters. Some monsters even seemed very antagonistic towards each other! Here's brothers Corbin and Chesney causing a monster ruckus!

Little Miss Lauren with her lovely visor!

Here's some group shots of Lauren, Corbin and Chesney posing with their finished crafts!

And of course Veronica with her visor!

Ben did a good job on his monster hat!

Once crafts were done, the kids joined Rhonda back on the floor for some more songs and games!

After that was done the kids were rewarded for a summer of fun with some delicious cupcakes that Rhonda had so generously made and brought that morning! Needless to say the kids were quite ecstatic!

They did manage to make quite the mess with their cupcakes, getting icing everywhere, including their faces!

And that was our Summer Reading Club for the 3-5 year olds, the Little Einsteins! Done and done! We still had the Summer Reading Club end of Summer Party to look forward too!

Happy Reading my little munchkins! Rhonda looks forward to seeing you all during the Fall Programming. A little birdie let slip that the theme is going to by "Underwater Adventure" which sounds AWESOME!

Final Summer Reading Club Prize Draw!!

Oh! I forgot! We also did our last draw today! Here are the winners!

Little Einsteins: Lauren and Ella

Young Professors: Chesney!

Congrats to the winners! Unfortunately we didn't have a winner from the Mad Scientists as no one checked their Reading Record Logs this week!

Hopefully you all had fun though, reading this summer, I know I did!

Happy Reading!

Tra la la!!! The End of Our Summer!

So this week wraps up our Strange ... But True? Summer Reading Club 2012, yesterday we went out with a bang at the Montrose Park! We had a bouncy castle and carnival games from BV Tool Rentals, a refreshing water park for the kids to frolic in, our tie-dye-ing station all set up, and I had my camera at the ready!

I'll be posting my official post later this week or at the start of next week! I still have to post about our Monster Week with the Little Einsteins and Young Professors and Guest Wednesday with Les Anderson. And plus, I took about 250 pictures at the party! So it's going to take me a while to go through them all, pick out the good ones, and edit them! So please bear (pun! .... get it? no probably not, but Les Anderson talked a bit about bears during his Guest Wednesday visit, no? not funny? ok) - bare with me!

Until then here's a teaser picture from our Party from yesterday! This is a shot of some of the kids in the water park. Just before we started our water balloon fight we got a group picture, here the kids threw the water balloons up high and screamed as they were bombarded by rogue balloons!

Anyways, I just wanted to thank all the kids, Rhonda, the Beaver Valley Public Library, all our fantastic Guests for out Guest Wednesdays, the Trail Daily Times (for putting up with my constant emails and for sending the lovely Breanne Massey to the party to take some pictures and ask questions for the paper!), parents, and everyone for making this such a fun job for me! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

Happy Reading! 

Week 6 - To Be or Knot to Be? Möbius Strips with the Mad Scientists!

OM NOM NOM nom nom!

Sadly, last Thursday was our last Mad Scientist meeting at the Beaver Valley Public Library :( since this Thursday will be our Summer Reading Club Party, see my post about that here: http://beavervalleylibrarykids.blogspot.ca/2012/08/whats-happening-this-week-party.html

Today for out theme I thought science is awesome and so far this summer we've had lots of fun looking at science themed stuff, from biology, zoology, chemistry to math, so I thought more science is always a good thing!

Voila! You see? A simple piece of paper, one loop with a twist (Mobius Strip) and a circular loop!

So, the day before I practised my Möbius strip making and paper loop making! The above and below pictures are the before and after of my loops! The fascinating thing about Möbius strips is how simple, yet complex they are! All a Möbius strip is a loop that has a twist through it! (see above picture on the left!)

Tada!

The Strange ... But True? fact about a Mobius strip that makes it so weird, is that it is characterized as a surface with only one side and one edge, WHA- what!?!! right?

But its true and you can totally try it out for yourself its easy! Cut out a strip of paper and give it a twist before you tape your loop! Then with a pen or pencil start in the middle at a point in our loop and draw a continuous straight line down the middle until you connect the line. :O

The Möbius strip was found by two great German mathematicians, August Ferdinand Möbius (for whom the Möbius strip is named for) and Johann Benedict Listing in 1958.

I'm probably not it explaining it right, but there is this great story on YouTube, that introduced me to Möbius Strips! It's a video done by Vihart, who calls herself a Mathmusician and has a YouTube channel full of crazy, awesome math and music related videos that will blow your mind!

Anyways, I played the story of Wind and Mr. Ug for the Mad Scientists, its a good story that may make you cry :( its a little sad but also well told! I'll post the video here for you to watch! Let me know your thoughts!

After watching our YouTube story I laid out a bunch of pre-made Möbius Strips, construction paper, glue, tape, and scissors for the Mad Scientists to make their own Möbius Strips! Some of the Mad Scientists also went ahead and made some "get better" cards for Sara, who missed the Club because she broke her finger! :O ouch!

Here's some pictures of the Mad Scientists going crazy with making, decorating and constructing some Möbius Strips!

Kyleen made a crazy awesome Möbius Loop, where instead of having 1 twist, she made a loop of about 3-4 twists - as much as she could without ripping her paper!

She then cut down the middle all the way through her loop and it ended up becoming 3 interlocked loops with twists in them! Awesome!

We then went into the game of the Human Knot, which I wrote about in the Young Professor post for Week 6, you can see how to play that game here: http://beavervalleylibrarykids.blogspot.ca/2012/08/week-6-trick-of-light-with-young.html

Ha! I love the pictures of the Human Knot game! It kinda looks like a big awkward group dance! Although in well life it wasn't quiet as graceful.

After a few rounds of the Human Knot game, we carried on to another game, one that I call the Prisoner's Trick! All you need is some string!

Here's how it works!

• Get everyone to get paired off into groups of 2! Or picked out the pairs yourself!
• Tie up a piece of string that is about an arms length in length and at each end knot off a loop that's big or small enough for people to put their hands through and wear like bracelets
• Get one person of the pair to put on their "handcuffs" and then attach their partners to one wrist, and loop their handcuffs through their partners so that they are attached! If that makes no sense, then look at this picture!

• Then state some rules!
1. No taking off your handcuffs!
2. No using friction to escape (a lesson I learned from Jillian and Alicen!)
3. Be careful!
• Then tell the kids that they have to escape from their fellow partner! Tell them that they must untangle their handcuffs from each other to escape!

Here's a look at how the Mad Scientists tried to escape!

Now, I remember the first time I played this game, and its crazy fun and crazy frustrating!! You end up just stepping through the string and coming up still tangled! And even just looking at your interlocking handcuffs, I thought "THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!!!!"

But let me tell you! There is a trick!

Smarties, Miss Jillian and Alicen thought they could get it! They used some science to decode of the mystery! They used the power of friction!!! - which if you refer to the rules! - is illegal! Please refer to Rule 2!

Here's the proof of Jillian and Alicen breaking out of their prison!

Success!

Now, you probably are squirming in your seats in wonder as how to escape the clenches of this masterful trap! Here are two pictures of how to untangle yourself from the Prisoner's Escape!

Voila!

Crazy right? 

I showed Serena and Caleb the way out of there entanglement and they quickly hurrayed and danced in their newfound freedom! 

Then they went on to pass on their wisdom to Alicen and Jillian, who then went on to teach Emily and Kyleen!

After we were all free from our handcuffs, I quickly reviewed what we learnt today about Möbius Strips and then posed a question ... what if you could make an edible Möbius Strip!?!?!?

AWWWW YEAH! FRUIT BY THE FOOT!!! WHEEEEEEEEW!

Goodness me, this was another awesome idea from Vihart on her YouTube videos. The kids had a blast! Caleb made a giant Möbius Strip!

Alicen made a Möbius Strip and then patiently ripped down its middle and it became a larger skinnier loop!

Jillian made a teeny tiny Möbius Strip! Cute!

Here's Serena with her interlocked loops!

Kyleen ended up with some interlocked loops too! 

So that was our last Mad Scientist meeting :( it was so much fun and I'm looking forward to our party!

Happy Reading my friends!!