Theme Thursday: We Love Our Fathers!

Happy Father's Day! (Just a little bit late). Here's how we honored the great men in our lives at story time.

Song: Good Morning Dear Earth

Flannel: Little Mouse

Flannel: Alphabet Soup- DAD

Book: Just Like You by Emma Dodd

Flannel: Blue is the Lake

Finger Play: Big, Big, Big

Book: Mommy Loves Her Baby/Daddy Loves His Baby by Tara Jaye Morrow

Song: If You're Happy and You Know It

Song: Shake Your Sillies Out

Song: I'm a Little Teapot

Flannel: The Trumpet Went Toot, Toot, Toot

Book: The Very Best Daddy of All by Marion Diane Bauer

Song: Turn Around from Getting to know Myself

Make and Take Craft: Father's Day Picture Frames*

Okay, so this was an intense craft, with a lot of prep and I'm having mixed feelings about it. I didn't prepare enough (I normally prep 20 crafts for anywhere between 14-18 kids, and for this story time everyone who has ever come to story time showed up) and it's not a particularly fun craft for the younger kids (anyone under 24 months). However, I couldn't stand the thought of doing another tie craft for Father's Day. I would highly recommend this for a smaller group or for one on one crafting with your child and I've included alternative instructions were appropriate.

Supplies:

-crayons

-paper clips

-masking tape

-glue stick

-poster board (shapes prepared beforehand)

- pattern shapes

Process: To prep the craft cut out as many pattern shapes as needed. Glue the DAD piece to the back in such a way that the tops of the Ds are not glued down and there's a little wiggle room to slide a picture in and out. See the picture below?

 Where there is red crayon is where you want to cover in glue stick. Once the glue dries you should be able to slide a piece of paper/photo that is 2.75 X 3.25 inches into the gap.

Let the child decorate the frame.

Alternatively, if you've planned ahead or are doing this at home and have the pictures that you want to use, you can have the child decorate the front and back piece separately before gluing the pictures onto the DAD piece and then gluing that whole thing to the backing piece. You won't be able to change the pictures this way, but it makes the assembly process a lot more straightforward.

To make the picture frame stand up, use masking tape to secure the smaller, inner loop of 2-3 large paper clips on the back. Pull back the big part of the paperclip down to a 90 degree angle.

Time: Way too freaking long. Prep took about 3 hours, all told, spread out over 3 days and the craft itself took about 20 minutes. With the exception of one 3 year old who worked on her frame for at least an hour. It was a true thing of beauty and I wish I had gotten a picture.

* This is an adaptation of the Martha Stewart craft found here. (But I think mine looks better, shhhhh, don't tell Martha.)

Clubhouse Mysteries, Books 1 & 2, Sharon M. Draper

The Teaser: In this early elementary series, Sharon M. Draper follows a group of four African American boys, who call themselves the Black Dinosaurs, as they get into adventures and find trouble. In the first book, the Black Dinosaurs discover a box of human bones buried underneath their clubhouse and try to uncover who cut down the basketball hoops in their neighborhood. In the second book they get stuck in a tunnel that was once used as a part of the Underground Railroad. 

What Stood Out: The mysteries, at least in the second book, are exciting and gripping. The historical basis is solid and could easily lead the children reading the books to want to find out more. I wouldn't hesitate to use Lost in the Tunnel of Time in conjunction with factual resources for an introduction to or a unit on the Underground Railroad. The four main characters: Jerome, Ziggy, Rashawn, and Rico are great. Best friends with wildly different personalities and interests, young readers will be able to easily identify with at least one of them. In addition, only Rashawn lives with a traditional nuclear family. I thought it was great and rarely seen for a book to treat non-nuclear families so casually and not make it a driving part of the story or the character's identities.

What Didn't Work: Mon, Ziggy's Jamaican patois is grating. Apart from that, parts of the books reek of tokenism, with African heritage words being thrown in with little or no context. Both of the books that I read relied on a kindly old man for exposition and both related back to his grandfather, an escaped slave. I can't see this troupe remaining interesting or offering anything new in future books. Finally, the mysteries wrap up quickly and with no follow-up, kinda like the end of an episode of Scooby-Doo.

Anything Extra Special: 

Black Kids in the City

I started reading the Clubhouse Mysteries series (first published as Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs) because I'm always looking for early readers featuring black kids. I think it's important for children to recognize themselves and their experiences in books and the majority of early elementary series feature middle class white kids in the suburbs. I really appreciated Draper's portrayal of black kids in an urban environment. I'm not personally in love with this series for reasons mentioned above, but I will be recommending it wholeheartedly and I'm excited to start the author's Sassy series, aimed at African American girls of a similar age. 

Progress

Lost in  the Tunnel of Time was exponentially better and more interesting than The Buried Bones Mystery. If the series continues up this path, I'd be happy to keep checking in it periodically.