{"id":1696,"date":"2010-07-15T04:11:51","date_gmt":"2010-07-15T11:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=1696"},"modified":"2010-09-10T19:01:57","modified_gmt":"2010-09-11T02:01:57","slug":"snowing-in-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2010\/07\/snowing-in-july\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowing in July!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Snow books. Around the middle of January, I’m going to bet that most of them are checked out from your library. I know they are at mine. Which is why I decided to do a snow program in the middle of July when I’d have my pick of the snow books! This was a program for going-into-K-2nd graders. It was cheap and easy and we had a blast! Here’s what we did…<\/p>\n

First, I decorated the room to set the mood. I used our die-cut machine to cut out tons of white snowflakes, which I put up on the door to the room (along with some paper “icicles”).<\/p>\n

\"DSCN0875\"<\/p>\n

I put up the rest of the snowflakes on the bulletin board in our room. I also put up instructions for the craft (nice to have so parents can remember what to do) and my samples for the craft.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN0876\"<\/p>\n

I started off by sharing a couple of my favorite snow-related books. I read Snowmen at Night<\/a> by Caralyn Buehner (Dial, 2002), Winter Woes<\/a> by Marty Kelly (Zino Press Children’s Books, 2004), and Snowballs<\/a> by Lois Ehlert (Red Wagon Books, 1995). It was this last book that gave me the inspiration for our craft: snowmen made with all kinds of different objects.<\/p>\n

I had set out all the stuff:<\/p>\n

\"DSCN0873\"<\/p>\n

We had beans, popcorn (unpopped, though you could use popped, too), pasta, shells, buttons, and leftover Easter grass. The best thing about this craft is that you can use whatever you have on hand – bits of yarn, scraps of paper or cloth, tinsel, toothpicks… And you can pick up additional stuff at the grocery store on the cheap. I got the beans and popcorn for less than $5.00 (look for a bean soup mix – mine had 16 different kinds of beans) and I got tiny shells at Hobby Lobby for $2.99.<\/p>\n

Each child got a piece of blue construction paper and three “snowballs” (I traced different size circles and had them pre-cut for the kids, but if you’re short on prep time you could have the kids cut out their own circles). I set out the “stuff”, crayons, and plenty of glue. The kids did the rest of the work!<\/p>\n

My favorite thing is crafts that allow kids to be really creative. Here are some examples:<\/p>\n

\"DSCN0888\"<\/p>\n

\"DSCN0889\"<\/p>\n

\"DSCN0892\"<\/p>\n

It’s been so hot here lately, we definitely needed something to cool us off. \u00a0The kids had fun imagining making snowmen in the middle of July and the librarians had fun because it was a cheap, easy craft!<\/p>\n

Books mentioned in this post:<\/p>\n

Snowballs<\/em> by Lois Ehlert (Red Wagon Books, 1995).
\n<\/span>Snowmen at Night<\/em> by Caralyn Buehner (Dial, 2002).
\nWinter Woes<\/em> by Marty Kelly (Zino Press Children’s Books, 2004).<\/p>\n

— Abby Johnson
\nChildren’s Services Manager
\nNew Albany-Floyd County Public Library
\nNew Albany, IN
\n(I can also be found blogging at abbythelibrarian.com<\/a>!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Snow books. Around the middle of January, I’m going to bet that most of them are checked out from your library. I know they are at mine. Which is why I decided to do a snow program in the middle of July when I’d have my pick of the snow books! This was a program for going-into-K-2nd graders. It was cheap and easy and we had a blast! Here’s what we did… First, I decorated the room to set the mood. I used our die-cut machine to cut out tons of white snowflakes, which I put up on the door to the room (along with some paper “icicles”). I put up the rest of the snowflakes on the bulletin board in our room. I also put up instructions for the craft (nice to have so parents can remember what to do) and my samples for the craft. I started off…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[101,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alsc-blogger-abby-johnson","category-programming-ideas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}