Monday, December 17, 2007

Storytime @ the Shops at Rossmoor! - Dec. 19, 2007


Bundle up and join us this Wednesday afternoon at 4pm at the Shops at Rossmoor for a special "Winter Treats" storytime! We'll devour fun cookie books, cozy up with wintry tales, and even make a darling gingerbread man garland to take home. We'll be near the fountain in front of Peet's Coffee and Complexion Day Spa. If it rains, meet us at CPK!

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Which Pooh character are you?

Apparently, I am.....


Take the 100 Acre Personality Quiz!

I happened upon this little quiz today and thought you might want to find out if you might be a Kanga or Piglet or another of the Hundred Acre family. Frankly, I've always thought of myself as more of an Eeyore.....

Friday, November 30, 2007

FALL 07 Storytime - Nov. 20 - THANKSGIVING

Books:
I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie/ Jackson, Allison
The Firefighters' Thanksgiving/ Boelts, Maribeth
Thanksgiving Mice!/ Roberts, Bethany
Over the River: A Turkey's Tale/ Anderson, Derek
Turkey on the Loose!/ Wickstrom, Sylvie

Fingerplays:
Way Up High in the Apple Tree
Five Little Apples

Songs:
The Turkey Ran Away (tune: Farmer in the Dell)
Turkey! Turkey! (tune: Skip to My Lou)
I'm Thankful For (tune: The Bear Went Over the Mountain)

Flannelboard Story:
The Enormous Turnip

Craft:
paper plate fall wreath

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

FALL 07 Storytime - Nov. 13 - GOING PLACES


Books:
Clickety Clack/ Spence, Amy
Dinosailors/ Lund, Deb
Row, Row, Row Your Boat/ Oppenheim, Joanne
Mr. Gumpy's Outing/ Burningham, John
Wake Up Engines/ Mortensen, Denise
Silly Sally/ Wood, Audrey

Flannel Rhymes & Story:
Color Train
5 Little Boats
Three Billy Goats Gruff

Fingerplays:
Here Comes the Choo-Choo Train
My Bicycle (from I'm a Little Teapot by Jane Cobb)

Song:
Down By the Station

Craft:
car cut-out picture

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

FALL 07 Storytime - Oct. 30 - HALLOWEEN

Books:
Popcorn/ Asch, Frank
Mommy?/ Sendak, Maurice
Where the Wild Things Are/ Sendak, Maurice
This is the Pumpkin/ Levine, Abby
Farm-Fresh Cats/ Santoro, Scott
The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything/ Williams, Linda
Apples and Pumpkins/ Rockwell, Anne

Songs:
I'm a Little Pumpkin, Short and Stout
The Leaves on the Trees are Falling Down
The Great Big Spider

Flannel/Fingerplays:
Five Little Pumpkins
One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pumpkins

Activity:
Scarecrow, Scarecrow Turn Around

Puppet Story:
Go Away Big Green Monster (based on the book by Ed Emberley)

Craft:
spider web plates

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

FALL07 Storytime - Oct. 23 - PRINCES & PRINCESSES


Books:
The King's Tea/ Noble, Trinka
King Bidgood's in the Bathtub/ Wood, Audrey
The End/ LaRochelle, David
If I Were Queen of the World/ Hiatt, Fred
One Monday Morning/ Shulevitz, Uri
Princess Aasta/ Ordal, Stina
The Princess and the Pea/ Anderson, Hans Christian


Flannel Rhymes:
Two Little Bluebirds
Humpty Dumpty

Songs:
The Grand Old Duke of York
Sing a Song of Six Pence

Craft:
paper crowns

Monday, October 22, 2007

Tumblebooks for kids!

Did you know that the library has fabulous e-books for kids online? TumbleBooks are audiovisual versions of popular books that you can access from the OCPL website. From our website, www.ocpl.org, click on "Children's Services," and then click on "E-Books for E-Kids."

TumbleBook story books are animated versions of popular picture books such as Little Pea, Diary of a Worm, and Miss Malarkey Doesn't Live in Room 10, complete with text and sound. There are also full text e-book versions of lengthier chapter books, such as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with the option to turn on an audio recording of the displayed text.

TumbleBooks are great for parents who are looking to present reading in a new way and also for kids who are learning to read independently. The chapter e-books are also great for kids who read better while listening to the text at the same time.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

FALL07 Storytime - Oct. 16 - MISS CATHY'S FAVORITES

Books:
Little Pea/ Rosenthal, Amy Krause
Butterfly, Butterfly/ Horacek, Petr
A Good Day/ Henkes, Kevin
The Little Red Hen/ Barton, Byron (big book version)
Old Mother Hubbard/ Hawkins, Colin
Joseph Had a Little Overcoat/ Taback, Simms
Let's Make Rabbits/ Lionni Leo

Flannelboard Rhymes & Songs:
Here's a Nest
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
BINGO

Songs:
Have You Ever Seen an Apple? (tune: "The More We Get Together")
Autumn Leaves are Falling Down (tune: "The Wheels on the Bus")

Fingerplay:
Tommy Thumbs Up

Game:
What Color Am I?

Film:
"Good Night, Gorilla" based on the book by Peggy Rathmann

Monday, October 15, 2007

Children's Book Week Bookmark Contest!

The Los Alamitos-Rossmoor Library's 2nd Annual Children's Book Week Bookmark Contest starts today! Children in preschool through 5th grade are invited to participate. This year's theme is "Rise Up Reading." Three winners will be chosen and each will receive a Barnes & Noble gift card. Winning entries will be reproduced for distribution at the branch and local schools.

Entry forms are available at the library. Completed entries must be turned in to the library by 5:00 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 17, 2007.

Be creative, have fun, and best of luck to all our budding artists!

Saturday, October 13, 2007

FALL07 Storytime - Oct. 9 - MICE

Books:
Who Sank the Boat?/ Allen
Frederick/ Lionni
Whose Mouse Are You?/ Krause
Elephant in a Well/ Ets

Flannelboard Story:
"The Rat's Daughter" from The Flannel Board Storytelling Book/ Sierra, Judy

Nursery Rhyme:
Hickory Dickory Dock

Craft:
mouse finger puppets

Monday, October 1, 2007

World Book Online

Did you know that you can now access World Book Online through the OCPL website? This fabulous, fully searchable, electronic version of the World Book Encyclopedia is an awesome resource for kids' research assignments. It's got well written articles on every possible topic, as well as pictures and video for putting together multimedia presentations. Everything is true and fact-checked by World Book's editors, so you know everything is reliable and up to date.

To access this resource, go to the OCPL website and click on "Research and Resources." At the top of the center column, you'll see a link to "World Book Online." If you're trying to get to this from home, just enter your library card number without any spaces. If there's a "D" in your library card number, replace that with a "2." The default page is World Book Advanced, intended for high school students, but in the bottom right hand corner there's a link that says, "Switch to another World Book site." Click that and then select "World Book Kids," which is a more kid-friendly site intended for the youngest little researchers.

If you have any questions about it, don't forget to call the library! Enjoy and good luck with those school projects.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

23 Things

As librarians, we're constantly challenged with learning about, adapting to, and co-opting new technology. As we've already known for quite awhile, the library is about more than just books! At LAR, some of the librarians have been doing what's called, "The 23 Things Web Challenge," a sort of Internet scavenger hunt designed to bring us all up to speed about all the fancy, new, user-driven content on the Internet (a.k.a. some of the things that make up the whole Web 2.0 revolution).

I've just finished doing my 23 Things and I discovered that some of the 23 were already familiar and some weren't. I'd already used things like Flickr, Blogger, and LibraryThing, but I wasn't too familiar with pretty neat sites like Rollyo, where you can create a sort of customized search engine that only searches the sites that you know you want to look at, and del.icio.us, where you can basically take your web page bookmarks with you to any computer and bookmark stuff that you want other people to see.

Bottom line, many of these technologies can be used to create innovative library services and reach out to patrons in new ways, but only if your library system and administration are forward thinking enough to embrace Web 2.0 and allow people to be creative in their use of these tools. Thankfully, OCPL is one of those libraries! Let's hope all this new knowledge will help us to be innovative and adopt those techie things that will be most useful to keeping libraries alive and well!

FALL07 Storytime - Oct. 2 - AUTUMN & APPLES

Books:
Leaf Man/ Ehlert
Apple Pie Tree/ Hall
Bears' Autumn/ Tejima
Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf/ Ehlert
Ten Red Apples/ Hutchins
Fall Leaves Fall/ Hall

Song:
Apples and Bananas

Flannelboard Story:
That Apple is Mine!/ Arnold

Craft:
leaf rubbings

FALL07 Storytime - Sept. 25 - SCHOOL

Books:
John Patrick Norman McHennessy/ Burningham
Just Another Ordinary Day/ Clement
Crictor/ Ungerer
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom/ Martin
Maisy Goes to the Library/ Cousins

Drawing Story:
Monkey Face/ Asch

Craft:
apple stamp canvas bags