New Year’s tends to bring a refreshing feeling and a thirst for change. What better way to start off the new year than by making a New Year’s resolution? The new year presents us with an opportunity to make a change; whether it’s to become healthier, lose a habit or do something just for fun! With limitless possibilities, it can be daunting to pick a resolution and stick with it. But the library is a great resource to find ideas and information to help kids get started on making a change for the better! Here are some ideas for New Year’s resolutions and some books to complement them: Continue reading “New Year, New You!”
As 2015 comes to an end, the children’s staff at DBRL has been reminiscing about the fabulous new books that arrived on our shelves this year. While it’s hard to pick a favorite, there were some books that stood apart from the rest. Here are our top 11 favorite picture books and chapter books published in 2015.
“All My Stripes” by Shaina Rudolph
I really liked how this book talks about differences in a way children
understand, while still telling a story children will want to read. The
illustrations are also really well done. ~Katie L
“Bunnies!!!” is the perfect picture book to pull out for an impromptu story time! It’s an entertaining combination of a misunderstood monster, multicolored bunnies and a noisy, fast-paced game of hide-and-seek. ~Kristy
Continue reading “Best Children’s Books of 2015”
This past fall, the Columbia Public Library hosted its fourth season of the Heavy Medal Mock Newbery program. Youth in grades 4-8 were invited to join us twice per month to discuss possible Newbery Award contenders for 2015. The John Newbery Medal is an award given annually for the most distinguished contribution to American Literature for children. At these interactive sessions, we discussed six Newbery contender books, and kids were able to defend the book they felt deserved the Heavy Medal Mock Newbery Award.
This year we read the following books:
Continue reading “2015 Mock Newbery Winners”
Looking for a cheap and easy way to create keepsakes with your children? Try making a hand imprint ornament! You can do this activity with babies and decorate it yourself, or you can work together with older children, allowing them to add personal touches. Even your pets can get involved if you want to make paw imprint ornaments! Regardless of the subject, you will create a cherished memento that will last for years.
Want to give this hand-y gift a try?
Continue reading “Hand-y Ornament”
We are excited to announce that DBRL has recently acquired six children’s digital magazine subscriptions through Zinio! To use Zinio, you need an active DBRL library card. Multiple readers can check out the same magazine at the same time, and you can keep issues on your computer or mobile device as long as you wish. This service is PC and Mac compatible, and an app is available for most mobile devices. If you have questions about setup, you can use our Quick Start Guide.
Here are the digital magazines for kids that we currently have to offer:
American Girl
American Girl magazine is packed with fun! The content includes party plans, crafts, real girls’ stories, quizzes and contests. Ages 8 and up. Continue reading “New Digital Magazines for Kids”
This fall
R.L. Stine, famed author of the beloved Goosebumps book series, held a contest with the Scholastic Reading Club called the
Design-A-Monster Contest. To enter the contest, U.S. students in grades 2-6 were encouraged to draw an original monster, come up with a name for the creature and write up a short description of what makes it so spooky. The entries were judged on originality, creativity and execution. With almost 15,000 entries from across the country, the judges had the extremely difficult and terrifying task of selecting only eleven creepy creations to be recognized.
Continue reading “DBRL Patron Wins Design-A-Monster Contest”
America Recycles Day, celebrated on November 15th, has passed us by. Did you celebrate with your children by utilizing your local recycling center, repurposing something that you otherwise would have thrown away or by taking the Keep America Beautiful pledge? If you did, wonderful! If you missed out on celebrating America Recycles Day, that’s okay! You can celebrate recycling any day of the year.
Recycling is a great activity for children to participate in, not only because it helps the environment and reduces waste, but also because it can be a sorting project, requiring children to pay attention to details.
A great place to start your recycling journey is your local library, where you can find children’s books about recycling and examples of recycling. When we update the DBRL buildings or buy new furniture, we give preference to local products and products that have a percentage of the content made from recycled materials. Continue reading “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”
“Hooray for Hat!” is a fun, brightly colored picture book that follows animal friends as they go from being grumpy to being happy, all thanks to wonderful hats! The simple text and the animals’ facial expressions let us clearly know the animals’ moods throughout the book. Brian Won, both the illustrator and author, begins the book with a gray elephant waking up grumpy. What will change his mood!? Why, a stack of fun hats of course! Elephant then wants to show his friends his hats and share the joy.
As a gal who hosts lots of story times, I think this book is fantastic! It’s perfect as a read-aloud, boasting large bright illustrations, simple text and the message that it’s the little things in life that can brighten a grumpy mood. Continue reading “2015 Missouri Building Block: Hooray for Hat!”
Have you ever taken a song and added your own words? Jane Cabrera does this with “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” As her characters row down the stream, they spot a variety of animals, each making a noise. Have your child make the noise, too. Animal noises are a fun way to practice sounds. This is an early literacy skill—something that lays a foundation for reading readiness.
Children love to move. You and your child could sit on the floor, bottoms of your feet touching the bottoms of his feet. Hold hands and gently pull back and forth as you “row” and sing the song.
Your child could act out the story by pretending that a box or a laundry basket is a boat. Does she have some stuffed animals she could set beside the “boat” and tell her own story? This activity helps with narrative skills and reading comprehension.
Continue reading “2015 Missouri Building Blocks: Row, Row, Row Your Boat by Jane Cabrera”
The library is celebrating Latino history with a variety of programs, book displays, special story times and more! One way you can continue this fun at home is to create a rainstick based on those used by the Aztecs. The Aztecs believed that they could summon rain storms by using rainsticks. Originally they were made from pieces of hollow cacti that were dried in the sun. The spines from the cacti were driven into the cacti like nails, and pebbles or other small objects were placed inside. To complete the rainstick, the ends were sealed. When the rain stick was tipped, the pebbles would fall through the tube and bump against the spines. This would create a sound like fa
lling rain.
Now, I’m not going to ask you to go find a cactus for this project. There is a simple, child-friendly rainstick you and your kids can create.
Continue reading “Recycled Rainstick Craft”
