Reading Roundup – August 23, 2021

Summer Reading Club is looking a bit different at our library this summer, as our programs are either virtual or outdoors. I’ve done two virtual programs so far, and they were both super fun, so I thought I’d share a little bit about them.

Each 45-minute virtual program was based around a book, with songs, stories and activities designed to fit the theme or spirit of the story. They were registered programs, for kids in grades K-3. The over-arching Summer Reading Club theme this year is mysteries, so we tried to pick books that had a bit of a mystery or guessing game element to them.

The first program was centred around Jan Thomas’ WHAT IS CHASING DUCK?

This is such a fun story – Duck describes the thing that’s chasing him, and each animal interprets that description in a scary way, when in reality, the creature that’s chasing Duck might not be quite so scary after all. This is an early reader with very minimal text, but there’s plenty of opportunity to really ham it up. We shared it as an e-book, which worked really well, as everyone could see the illustrations.

We then did some singing (an animal-themed version of the Hokey Pokey was a big hit), did an animal trivia game where kids had to guess which animal we were describing, and then the most fun game of all was a challenge where we showed a super close up of a part of an animal and had kids guess which animal it was. The kids got really into it!

The second program was based on CREEPY PAIR OF UNDERWEAR by Aaron Reynolds, which was sure to be a hit right from the get-go. I mean, look at that cover!!

Jasper is a big bunny now, and convinces his mom to let him buy a pair of creepy glow-in-the-dark undies. But these undies don’t just look creepy – they are creepy, and now Jasper can’t get rid of them! What’s a bunny to do when faced with a creepy pair of underwear that just won’t take a hike??

The kids had an absolute blast with this one – I’m particularly proud of how my intro went, as I created a paper cut-out pair of creepy underwear and taped it to one of my rabbit puppets. I introduced my friend Hoppy as a perfectly normal rabbit, dressed as a normal rabbit does, out doing normal rabbit things, and pretended to be confused as the kids fell over themselves laughing at my rabbit’s underwear. Oh, these are the days that make being a children’s librarian really, really awesome!

We played a “Guess that phobia!” game, where kids had to guess what each long phobia name meant, based on the clues we gave them. We did a freeze-dance game, where kids danced around, then froze in place when the music paused. And we did some drawing on the Zoom whiteboard, which was a lot of fun.

Virtual programs definitely have their challenges, especially when working with younger kids, and having an extra facilitator was absolutely a life-saver when kids were having technical issues. But wow was it fun, and so great to still be able to share books and stories and songs with kids in my community.

Have you been doing anything fun recently to celebrate summer reading?