We had a great Page Presents class this week. Ravi couldn’t wait to show me his new sock puppet, inspired by Page. He had one of his old socks—so little!—and his mother had stitched a tiny red nose. Its button eyes were big red dinosaurs (Page’s eyes are lime-green “I read banned books” buttons). Too bad Page wasn’t there to meet his new little friend. He was at home obsessively slaving over our new blog. Everyone really misses him.
Matt taught a call-and-response rhythm game, and my elderly chimp puppet told the story of The Monkey and the Alligator (adapted from The Monkey and the Crocodile: A Jataka Tale from India, by Paul Galdone). Mr. Monk was ably assisted in his dramatization by Mr. Al, my new alligator puppet (formerly owned by of one of my childhood playmates and sent to me recently by his mother, with his blessing).
I was so worn out from getting our taxes finished just under the wire that I completely forgot to take pictures of the kids with their alligator cards. So I just took a photo of the ‘gators. The kids loved Mr. Al’s big mouth and his gravelly assertions that “I’m going to EAT you! Mmm-hmm…I can just taste that warm monkey blood!”
Afterwards I had conversations with a couple of moms who were new. One of them wanted suggestions for poems for her second grader, who had to memorize a poem for class. Just the day before I had been amazed to overhear a little girl reading from A Child’s Garden of Verses to her little sister. I might have hesitated to recommend it otherwise, for fear that it might seem too old-fashioned, but the girls were discussing it with obvious enjoyment, so I started with that. The mother was amazed that I could still spout excerpts from it. She went home with a stack of selections, including a collection by Jack Prelutsky, an Oxford collection of children’s verse, collections by A.A. Milne and Edward Lear, as well as Robert Louis Stevenson’s venerable volume.
The other mom told me how happy she was that we allowed the children to use (blunt-ended) scissors and to make their own crafts. She talked about how appalled she was that, so often these days, the focus is on the product and not the process. I agreed whole-heartedly. Since I began leading the Page Presents program in December, it has been gratifying to see the parents and kids gain confidence in their own creative impulses and begin personalizing their weekly creations instead of adhering slavishly to the model and the kit pieces as presented.
Hi everybody! I’m Page, co-host of Page Presents: Learn with Stories, Music & Art at the Juan Tabo Library.
I’m a Webworm, as well as a bookworm, as you can see. Everybody thinks I’ve been on vacation to someplace cool like the British Library, but I’ve actually been wearing my nose out at our MacBook Pro, updating my skills and setting up our blog.
Ohhh, my sore nose! All that clicking! WAAAAAAAAA, I want an iPad!!!! Customizing our new blog has been a LOT of work. Right now I still can’t figure out how to get the image gallery to be only on the Welcome page. But I’m gonna give my nose a break. I think the blog looks pretty cool already, though, don’t you?
When my nose feels better, I’ll add a colophon (that’s something we bookworms know about, I’ll explain later). In the meantime, I wanted to tell you that the fonts we used on the banner image for the site are inspired by the work of Alexander Girard. Girard Sansusie and Girard Script were created by the über-cool type foundry, House Industries. Check out their fab tribute to Girard. Vicky has been wishing for their Girard blocks for ages and ages.
This week Page Presents featured a special guest presenter! Matt and his daughter Zoey are regular attendees, but not everyone knows that he is a professional percussionist and music educator. “Mr. Matt” brought his portable drum set to the library and enthralled everyone with his interactive explorations of The Beat.
He asked the kids if they knew what number comes after 1. “Two!” they shouted, and he proceeded to tap out a duple meter. “What comes after 2?” “Three!” and now we heard a waltz rhythm. This went on up through 9! We also learned to recognize a jazz rhythm that goes…Door, shut the door. And a samba rhythm…Boom-chick-a-boom. We all got to play along with the music on rhythm instruments. The kids were thrilled when Mr. Matt invited them to try out his drum set!
Then we made our own paper plate tambourines with monkey faces (inspired by the book Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb.
Afterwards Matt was critiquing his teaching and wondering if he had overloaded the kids with too much information. I suggested that we could have “Mr. Matt’s Minute” every week, and he could teach one or two simple concepts that we could repeat from week to week. Then, when he brings his drum set again for a longer session, we could see if this has made a difference in the kids’ understanding of rhythms. What fun!
Last week’s “Page the Bookworm Presents” storytime class at my library featured the song, “Waltzing with Bears” and I used the flannelboard and puppets to tell the story of how my Uncle Walter goes waltzing with bears:
He goes wa-wa- wa-wa- wa-wa waltzing with bears,
Raggy bears, baggy bears, shaggy bears too.
There’s nothing on earth Uncle Walter won’t do,
So he can go waltzing, wa-wa-wa waltzing,
So he can go waltzing, waltzing with bears.
Then we made bear bodi-puppets (I got the idea for bodi-puppets from the excellent book, Storytelling with Puppets, by Connie Champlin). The head of the puppet was a paper plate covered with a brown construction paper face. The body of the puppet was made from a brown paper grocery bag. The arms were made of strips of burlap, with one end stapled into the puppet body, and a seam enclosing a rubber band at the other end. The puppet hangs in front of the child’s body, and the rubber bands on the puppet’s arms go around the child’s wrists. The child’s arms become the puppet’s arms, and the puppet comes to life…perfect for dancing along to a recording of Waltzing with Bears.
I discovered this great music video for Waltzing with Bears on YouTube!
