I was planning a story-time featuring polar bears, and had already settled on which books to use when someone put this book, Cold Paws, Warm Heart, by Madeleine Floyd, on my desk.
I was quickly flipping through it, when it opened to an image of a large polar bear playing a silver flute! We had already made polar bear masks with my Page Presents class, so this became the featured book for my Movement & Music class for toddlers when I discovered that I could play my flute under the mask.
Last week I repeated the program for a mothers’ group that had requested a special story-time for their kids. Only three kids and their moms showed up, and none of the kids were happy to be there. One boy started repeating, “I want to go home!” When none of them wanted to play the chimes, I knew I was doomed, because kids ALWAYS want to play the chimes.
But I tried my best to carry on with the story-time, and began reading Cold Paws. The last thing I saw before donning the polar bear mask was the grumpy kids clinging to their mothers. Behind the mask, I couldn’t really see anything, and I just concentrated on playing the sad little tune of the lonely bear. But, oh my!
When I pushed the mask up off my face, I was surrounded at close range by a ring of about 8 kids. And they were all leaning forward!
Like the cold bear in the story, I finally felt completely warm inside.
A great book to pair with Cold Paws, Warm Heart is No Bath for Boris, by Diana White. It is—may I say— the polar opposite. While the bear in Cold Paws is cold and wants to be warm, Boris and his Mama love the cold. The faucets on the bathtub are marked, “Cold” and “Colder,” and Mama throws in some ice cubes and opens the window so the cold air can blow in. She tells Boris to get out of the tub before the water gets warm, and hands him some towels fresh from the fridge. Delicious! And the illustrations in pale polar colors perfectly capture the comfort and playfulness between the wayward little bear and his mama.
Our monthly Read to the Dogs program was on Saturday, and Harry Potter the Airedale Terrier was wearing his Santa hat!
What a mellow boy. All of his regular fans were there, plus some new friends.
My teen volunteer, Gregoria, had made two displays of dog books, including one with holiday books featuring dogs.
One shy little girl had been hanging out with Harry Potter, but had resisted all requests to read to him. I asked her if she had seen the displays of dog books, because I was pretty sure she would find something that Harry would like.
As soon as she saw the display she reached for Ivan the Terrier, by Peter Catalanotto.
“I think I could read this,” she confided.
When I went off to lunch, she was happily reading to an appreciative Harry.
This week we had a Snow Parade at our Movement & Music storytime!
Inspired by the book, The Snow Parade, by Barbara Brenner and illustrated by Mary Tara O’Keefe, I made some large snowflakes from white poster board. I attached four of these to large colorful flags that I had, and made large snowflake wands with six others, for a total of ten.
In the book, Andrew Barclay wants to have a snow parade, but his sister and brother both reject the idea. So Andrew goes outside and starts marching in his own private snow parade.
Along the way, he encounters various curious animals who wonder what he is doing and then opine that a parade needs more participants. So he invites them to join in the parade.
The borders of the pages gradually fill with snowflakes, as an additional snowflake appears for each new participant.
The kids were eager to join the snow parade, and parents joined in, too. With a beautiful smile, an elderly grandfather accepted the snowflake wand that was made from a cane and marched in the parade with his grandsons.
When I blew the whistle, we all sang the parade song (to the tune of “Here We Go ‘Round the Mulberry Bush”):
Come along and march with us,
March with us, march with us,
Come along and march with us,
In the Snow Parade!
Before the parade, we played rhythm instruments along with “Good King Wenceslas” and “Patapan” by Mannheim Steamroller.
After finishing with a round of “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” and our goodbye song, we had to have another Snow Parade!
I wanted the kids to see the same story presented in three different media. First, I showed them the book and gave them a synopsis of the story as told in the book. I showed them the book illustrations and asked them to watch for similarities and differences in how the story was visually presented through print, puppetry, and ballet.
Then I repeated my puppet show version of the story that I had created for the Page Presents program. My puppet show includes the dolls, Lucinda and Jane, but does not include the thefts by Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca. Like the ballet, it includes a dance before the scene at the dining room table. Although I used Johann Strauss’ Pizzicato Polka for the dance the last time I presented the puppet show, this time the mice danced (briefly) to the electric sounds of Mannheim Steamroller. This incongruity with the period flavor of the rest of the production tickled the audience.
Next we watched a version from The Tales of Beatrix Potter, by England’s Royal Ballet. Beatrix Potter’s original watercolor illustrations spring magically to life through choreography by Frederick Ashton, a musical score by John Lanchbery, and costume design by Christine Edzard with masks by Rostislav Douboujinsky—as you can see in this clip advertising a current production at London’s Royal Opera House.
The ballet version does not include the dolls, but has a hilariously extended sequence of the mice smashing the plates of doll house food.
I was a little worried that the kids might become restive (especially for ballet!). But they watched intently, making occasional comments as they recognized various elements of the story. I fast-forwarded through a couple of dance sequences, and afterwards they all wanted to know what they had missed!
Several of the kids had seen The Nutcracker ballet, and I heard comments like, “Oh, I love ballet!” In any case, all of them were thrilled to make their own mouse masks. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me to record the splendid results.
While searching for a good image from the ballet, I ran across a lengthy Wikipedia entry on The Tale of the Two Bad Mice, which includes a fascinating account of the development of the story. It includes a photograph of the doll house that Norman Warne built for his niece Winifred, which served as a model for the doll house in Beatrix Potter’s story.
The December Origami Cool Zone at the Tony Hillerman Library featured star boxes and star books!
First we made star boxes. This was good practice for the star books, since they also begin with a square base.
After everyone had mastered the star box, we made a star book.
I found some beautiful marbled paper at the art supply store. Some people didn’t even believe that it was actually paper, which just goes to show you that we should teach more workshops on book-binding!
And paper-making, too.
The star book looks like a book when it is closed…
But then…
it unfolds…
and it looks like a star…
…when it is open!
Star books make impressive gifts, but they are surprisingly easy to make.
In the photos below, you can see how well everyone’s star boxes and star books turned out!
Last week Page Presents featured a puppet show based on the 1976 edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Father Christmas Letters. I’ve owned a copy of this for a long time, and I love it. I love Tolkien’s paintings and the different styles of calligraphy used by the various characters who contribute to the letters. I relish his attention to detail, including a number of different stamps and delivery methods for posting from the North Pole. I especially love the vivid characters who reappear year after year, particularly the North Polar Bear (Karhu), and his irrepressible nephews (Paksu and Valkotukka).
So I cobbled together a story based on several of the letters.
The major parts were played by my Father Christmas doll, my North Polar Bear teddy, and my Cave Bear puppet. I also created a Goblin puppet riding on a bat.
I re-used the same backdrop that has recently been a church (King 0′ the Cats), a library (Library Lion), and a dollhouse (The Two Bad Mice). I made color copies of three illustrations from the book, and added a frosting of snow to the roof, and the set became Father Christmas’s splendid new home at the North Pole (built after the North Polar Bear climbed the North Pole to retrieve his cap, causing the pole to break and crash through the roof of Father Christmas’s original home, where it proceeded to melt and flood everything).
Reading between the lines, the Father Christmas letters seem designed to explain any problems pertaining to Christmas presents, including delays, mix-ups, breakage, scarcity, and any other conceivable mishap.
Which is actually quite a stroke of genius!
The North Polar Bear is frequently involved, directly or indirectly, in the chaos and mayhem that Father Christmas has to cope with every year. In later years, depredations by goblins account for an increasing number of problems.
After the puppet show, we made North Polar Bear masks from paper plates, as well as Polar Bear paper dolls.
The first was written in milk, and the second was written in lemon juice.
As you can see, the inks appear different. The consensus was that, at least at the concentrations we were using for our experiment, lemon juice made the better ink.
The first is a message, which reads: “I love you (unclear) Nic, Nash & Mom.”
The second is a scene of a snowman, with snow falling around him.
Then we made our own notebooks. First we created a signature, or set of pages, by folding an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper, first vertically and then horizontally. The cover was cut from a brown paper grocery bag and folded in half. Then we punched two holes near the fold and hooked a rubber band up from the back side and over the top and bottom end of a twig to form a very cool binding.
Our cat, Vanessa, is so very Egyptian and goddess-like.
She deigned to pose for me—noblesse oblige— so I seized the opportunity to immortalize her in a READ poster.
For me, she personifies the magic of discovering other times, other places, through books—the allure of lost civilizations and ancient Egyptian mysteries…
Our Page Presents show featured Beatrix Potter’s story, The Tale of Two Bad Mice, on November 19.
I modified my backdrop, which had first been a church, then a library, and now a doll house. The story begins when the two residents of the doll house, Lucinda and Jane, go out for a ride in their carriage.
Tom Thumb and his wife, Hunca Munca, venture out from their hole and find that the door of the doll house is open.
They go inside, and, in my version of the story, Tom Thumb invites Hunca Munca for a dance before dinner. (I added the dancing because Matt had been wanting to teach the kids how to polka. Which he did!)
Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca dance to the opening section of “The Pizzicato Polka,” then decide to sample the delicious dinner laid out in the dining room.
They soon discover that the food is inedible and impossible to slice. It is doll house food, made from plaster. In the original story, the mice have a wonderful time smashing the dishes, but, alas, I had no doll house dishes to smash.
So, in my version the two mice just get really angry and decide to go upstairs and trash the house.
The pillow fight is beautifully messy! I have to be careful that my hastily constructed mouse puppets don’t get too carried away with the pillow fight, as they weren’t designed for much roughhousing!
In Beatrix Potter’s story, the mice then proceed to steal some of the doll furniture for their own home, but I cut this section. Lucinda and Jane return from their carriage ride and find their house in complete chaos. But, in the end, Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca contrive to pay for the damage they have caused. Tom Thumb finds a sixpence under the hearth rug and puts it into the dolls’ Christmas stocking. And Hunca Munca visits the doll house every morning before anyone is awake to dust and sweep it clean.
After the story, everyone made Mouse masks! These were inspired by the much more elegant design by Corinne Okada for florentine style rat masks (for a children’s theater production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin).
I read an excerpt from Jon Scieszka’s Time Warp Trio series, Da Wild, Da Crazy, Da Vinci, to introduce the kids to Da Vinci in a fun, light-hearted way. Leonardo thinks the time-traveling kids are spies, since they already know about his secret drawings for inventions that he has never made.
Then everyone made simple models of Leonardo’s ornithopter. They made test flights and then modified their ornithopters in various ways to improve their flight. We discovered that adding a nose cone really helped.
Afterwards, I got out my laptop and showed them video of the first human-powered ornithopter flight on August 2, 2010, with a craft designed and built by a team of University of Toronto engineering students.
I was planning a story-time featuring polar bears, and had already settled on which books to use when someone put this book, Cold Paws, Warm Heart, by Madeleine Floyd, on my desk.
