Snowman Jars

I love jar crafts. You can recycle jars and make beautiful things with them. I got the idea for these from Crafts by Amanda and tweaked it only a little bit. This is the original by Amanda, using paint and delicious marshmallows:

I substituted cotton for marshmallows and other materials for the parts that are painted.

Materials:
Jar
Buttons
Ribbon
Cotton
Mittens cut out from construction paper

And this is the final snowman jar:

I try to insert facts and science whenever I can, and for this program I talked about snowflakes and their formation, made fake sensory snow that the kids could touch, and talked about Wilson Bentley and the major contributions he made to the science of snowflakes and other forms of precipitation through his study, handling, and photography of snowflake crystals. We luckily have his work Snow Crystals here at the library, so I showed the kids some of his photographs from the book. A very inspirational man.

Decorative and Delicious Candy Jar

I love checking out the Target dollar section. It's been a while since I've been able to browse the items, mostly because I've been avoiding stores/buying items because Manuel and I have been looking for a house. Thankfully we finally went through the process and I am so grateful we closed on a home last week, right before Thanksgiving.

Before I go off on a tangent about that, I wanted to keep going with the dollar section at Target. They have such cute things for all seasons, and I've purchased prizes and items to use in craft and science programs at the library, such as kitchen scales and Halloween socks. Sometimes they have really cute jars - all shapes and sizes - to use for crafts, and I bought a beautiful jar (this one was $3) and some holiday candy to fill it up with.

Mostly it's for my family to enjoy and to have as a holiday centerpiece at the table. I also found some peppermint bark bells and some Peanuts holiday crunch bells. Very cute!

It's nice seeing the red, green, and silver candies in the jar. And I wanted to include this awesome Hershey's Kiss Santa Hat in this post, just because it is so clever to have the kiss shaped like a Santa hat, with HO HO HO on the white strip of paper. This one is a little large, which I think makes it even cuter. I love when they make larger than usual kisses.

Angry Birds

Angry Birds have been really big for some time now. There are Early Readers with Angry Birds/Star Wars crossovers, and we have been getting a lot of National Geographic/Angry Birds nonfiction science books for children that I really love. I think kids see Angry Birds on the cover and check them out, and I'm really glad because I hope this helps them become interested in animals, dinosaurs, and other topics.

I'd collected a bunch of Angry Birds stuff (posters, postcards, stickers, etc) for some time and I thought they would make great giveaways at an Angry Birds program. I found a treasure trove of printables at this awesome website and printed out some of the boxes with handles. I cut off the handles while making them so they could just be cube boxes. The TNT boxes came from this website and a good tutorial for the popsicle stick catapult can be found at this cool site. 

I found the little bouncy Angry Birds balls shown on the catapult site, but they were really expensive. Oriental Trading has some Crazy Bird Molded Bouncing Balls that were cheap and fit perfect in the bottle cap of the catapult.

Here are some images of the final products, and you can see some really awesome kid lined up his Crazy Bird balls to take a turn on the catapult.

Sock Creatures

The idea for this little guy is from Fun with Fabric by Annalees Lim.

Materials:
Sock
Ribbon
Buttons
Google Eyes
Pipe Cleaner
Cotton

I found the Halloween socks and ribbon (and the Halloween eraser he's holding) in the Target dollar section.

Crafts for Hispanic Heritage Month

These are great books if you are looking for crafts for Hispanic Heritage month, or to study world cultures, ancient civilizations such as the Aztec and Inca, or to celebrate holidays such as Dia de los Muertos or Cinco de Mayo.

25 Latino Craft Projects

Ana-Elba Pavon, Diana Borrego

Hispanic-American Crafts Kids Can Do!

Fay Robinson

Manualidades con cilindros de cartón

Bernadette Theulet-Luzié

Multicultural Art Activities: From the Cultures of Africa, Asia and North America

Darlene Ritter

This fall I am doing two bilingual story times and for the first time I will be adding on a craft at the end which I am very excited about.

The first craft will be a shaker made out of a toilet paper roll. Kids can put masking tape on one end, put in a little rice, cover the other end with masking tape, and then cover the roll with a colorful paper that they can pick out of a bunch I printed out. This is the example I created along with some of the colorful papers in the background.

The second story will take place at the beginning of November, so I thought a great craft would be a paper sugar skull mask. I found this awesome template over at Spoonful.com (sadly it looks like it's a little more difficult to find now).

Happy crafting!

Moon Festival

I thought September would be a great time to post these two books, since the mid-autumn moon festival falls in September. This year it fell on September 8.

Thanking the Moon
Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival
Grace Lin
2010

A young girl and her family celebrate the moon and give thanks in this book. Beautifully  illustrated by Grace Lin, the book can be read aloud or quietly and maintains a calm, peaceful tone. We are also given background information about the festival and about the many things the family takes to celebrate the moon, such as mooncakes and lanterns. A very beautiful and informative picture book for all ages.

Mooncakes
Loretta Seto
ill by Renne Benoit
2013

A beautiful story about a young girl and her family, this book also shows some of the traditions that families have when celebrating the Chinese Moon Festival. A young girl and her family make mooncakes and hang lanterns and look up towards the moon under its light. Her parents tell her about the woman who lives on the moon, a woodcutter named Wu-Gang, and Jade Rabbit.

These books have lovely illustrations, stories, and cultural information, and would be amazing paired together or read individually.

Hispanic Heritage Month

"Each year, Americans observe National Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 to October 15, by celebrating the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America." (hispanicheritagemonth.gov)

Check out some of these books we posted about at the library!

Also, happy 1 year anniversary to Libros Rancheros!