You're The Icing On My Cupcake!

   This past Tuesday evening we had a program at our library that was filled with sweet stories, activities and fun! Here are the stories we read;

 Little Mouse and the Big Cupcake

by Thomas Taylor

When Little Mouse finds a delicious cupcake, all his friends ask if they can have a taste. And Little Mouse, being a very kind mouse, says yes to each one of them. But will there be any left for Little Mouse once all his friends have taken a bite?

 Who Made This Cake?

 by Chihir Nakagawa

 Imagine a birthday cake like no other. What if the people you order your next birthday cake from are tiny, and what if they build cakes the way we build buildings? Tractor-trailers and giant cranes, catwalks, and helicopters. Hundreds of workers. Never have you seen such a construction site!

Piggies in the Kitchen

by Michelle Meadows

When Mama leaves for the day, her piggies have big plans. Sneaking into the kitchen to bake some treats, they make quite a mess—but it’s all for a very special surprise party!

We also had fun playing the following games;

Marshmallow Swap 

What you will need:

• straws
• marshmallows
• plates
• cups

  Place the same amount of marshmallows on each child's plate.  When you say go, they have to move the marshmallows from the plate to the cup by sucking them to the straw and dropping them into the cup. While many of my group found this difficult they enjoyed trying and all made a great effort to complete the task. Perhaps mini marshmallows would work better and prove to make the game easier.

Don't Break My Heart

What you will need: 

• clothes pins
• tissue paper hearts

     Give each child a clothes pin and have them sit in a circle. I clipped my clothes pin onto the tissue paper heart and then passed it to the child on my right.  The idea is to pass the heart around the whole group using only the clothes pin, no hands,  without breaking it. To make the game more difficult, the leader could call out different commands such as, "Stop! Go left!" "Stop! Go right!" "Pass across!" "Pass behind!" This is a fun and very easy game.

Craft:
 Sock Cakes

Ingredients:

• one pair of fuzzy socks (I got mine at the Dollar Store!)
• Tootsie Pops
• Cupcake liners
• cellophane
• ribbon

    Give each child a pair of socks, a tootsie pop and a cupcake liner.  Start by having the children roll up their pair of socks. Instruct them to begin rolling at the toe and be sure to keep the bottom flat (so that the cupcake stands upright).  Once they are finished rolling, use a rubber band to secure the rolled socks. Place the sock cake into a paper cupcake liner and insert Tootsie Pop in the center. Voila! You are done! You can dress up your sock cake by wrapping it in cellophane and adding ribbon. A treat to warm your feet! The perfect gift - a calorie free cupcake!

Blind Date With a Book...

           If you visit the Tecumseh library in the month of February, you'll notice a display of books, in plain brown paper wrappings. There are no titles or authors listed on the wrappers, just a teaser that alludes to what the book is about.   We've wrapped these books up tight with some paper from the dollar store so there’s no peeking to see what book is inside these anonymous packages. What are these books? Are they books so bad that we’re looking for a way to trick people into checking them out? Are they titles so scandalous that we  have covered them, for your benefit, lest someone sees you with one? No, not at all. These are books we think you’ll fall in love with, if you just give them a chance. 

     With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, we are playing matchmaker for library patrons. We are fixing them up with some of our favorite books and sending them on a Blind Date with a Book.  Patrons take a chance and check out a book we have selected, without knowing exactly what that book is until they get it home. We’re hoping we can introduce them to a book they will love, but may not have picked up on their own.

     Blind Date with a Book is an idea that I saw on Pinterest and I decided I wanted to try it out. Last snowy Sunday was the perfect day to do so! It was fun to come up with "personal ads" to pique readers’ interest in a book. We used brown Kraft paper to wrap up the books (then carefully cut out the area that covered the bar code on the back so that we could scan them out). Because the books are made anonymous in plain brown wrappings, we decorated the outside with words and heart stickers in hopes of tempting patrons to take a chance and read something new and unknown. Blind Date with a Book is an exercise in, truly, not judging a book by its cover!

     The selected books include titles that are staff favourites, but are not necessarily "popular" fiction. We tried to choose books that would appeal to both men and women and we were vague yet intriguing with the hints we added to the book wrappers. We hope this idea will catch on and that our patrons will have fun with it. As books are checked out, we will be adding to the selection of eligible (and available) books. 

Happy Reading!