Guest Wednesday - Next Week!?!

What's a happening here at the library next week you ask!? Well on Wednesday, our Special Guest is Diana from the Columbia Basin Water Smart, and we'll be learning all about where our water comes from and why it's so important to conserve water!!!

Here's the poster:

Hope to see you then!

The Return of the Infamous GUEST WEDNESDAYSZZ!!!

Next week we decided to kick off the Summer Reading Club with a fun Wednesday afternoon event!!

I'm looking very much forward to this! Also we have most of our Guest Wednesdays set up and planned out for this summer, so if you were curious as to who our guests will be and what they will be presenting, check out our summer calendar!

Tra la la!!! The End of Our Summer!

So this week wraps up our Strange ... But True? Summer Reading Club 2012, yesterday we went out with a bang at the Montrose Park! We had a bouncy castle and carnival games from BV Tool Rentals, a refreshing water park for the kids to frolic in, our tie-dye-ing station all set up, and I had my camera at the ready!

I'll be posting my official post later this week or at the start of next week! I still have to post about our Monster Week with the Little Einsteins and Young Professors and Guest Wednesday with Les Anderson. And plus, I took about 250 pictures at the party! So it's going to take me a while to go through them all, pick out the good ones, and edit them! So please bear (pun! .... get it? no probably not, but Les Anderson talked a bit about bears during his Guest Wednesday visit, no? not funny? ok) - bare with me!

Until then here's a teaser picture from our Party from yesterday! This is a shot of some of the kids in the water park. Just before we started our water balloon fight we got a group picture, here the kids threw the water balloons up high and screamed as they were bombarded by rogue balloons!

Anyways, I just wanted to thank all the kids, Rhonda, the Beaver Valley Public Library, all our fantastic Guests for out Guest Wednesdays, the Trail Daily Times (for putting up with my constant emails and for sending the lovely Breanne Massey to the party to take some pictures and ask questions for the paper!), parents, and everyone for making this such a fun job for me! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

Happy Reading! 

Guest Wednesday! - Hanne Smith: African Tales/Tails

Welcome Sign!!

Hanne giving her presentation!

So my lovely momma is an avid gardener, like seriously, there are plants in our house that are older, taller and much more quieter (as my mom likes to remind me) than me! My mom likes to call them her favourite children ... it really makes my sister, brother and I feel REAL special! Thanks Mom!

Recently, a couple years ago we moved to our new house and the year of my graduation from high school my mom started her new project of renovating her garden with the help of her creative and genius landscape designer friend, Buena! Now that my mom's garden is finished, she's been fostering and weeding like crazy over her outdoor friends. 

So, this year my mom found out about some Bee Pollinator Seminars/Movie Documentary Nights being hosted by Rossland Real Food (see website here: http://www.rosslandfood.com/) where a local entomologist was also going to be hosting some field trips into local farms/gardens give tours that expound on producing bee friendly gardens! 

I, sadly, missed the movie night! The documentary to be shown was called "Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us", here's the trailer: 

Anyways, this summer I made up for my absence by attending 2 of the field trips! One to a lovely local Fruitvale Organic Farm and the other to a quaint and beautiful home garden in Rossland!

And looooooong story short (too late!) that's how I meet Hanne Smith! She works for Rossland Real Food and organized our field trips - and did a fantastic job, I might add!

What's Happening Next Week?

Oh, what's that title of the post? You have a question? Well next week we got lots happening next week, thanks for asking!

For one thing our theme for week 3 is "It Came from Outer Space - Space Exploration, Astronomy, Alien Life and Science Fiction"! So we are going to be talking about space, planets, gravity and aliens!

I'm really excited about this theme because it also leds into the classic science fiction novels in our library! And I'm hoping to somehow tie in a little Ray Bradbury tribute since he sadly passed away this year. Fahrenheit 451 has been one of my absolute favourite novels and I just recently found the authorized graphic novel of Fahrenheit 451 in our library, so I'll be giving that a read! Look for the review here once I've finished! 

Hopefully, I'll find someway of incorporating him into the programming! I know his books are mature, but maybe I can find a good short story of his to read to the kids! Let me know in the comments if you have any ideas!

I'm also looking forward to doing something H.G. Welles oriented, since we had Jayne Garry of EZ Rock Radio come in this week for Guest Wednesday, maybe the Mad Scientists would like to hear about the whole War of the Worlds radio show fiasco!

We are also going to be making some fun and easy alien masks! I'm excited for these! Rhonda found some glow in the dark star wall decals and we are going to unleash the kids (sans glitter this time) to decorate up their masks and be creative.

I snapped a couple of pictures of my mask! I went crazy with my camera for the second one to make it look fresh from outer space!

Also next week, besides exploring the limitless bounds of space and science fiction, we are welcoming some special guests for our Guest Wednesday! Diana, Ryan and Marnie with Columbia Basin Water Smart will be coming in on Wednesday afternoon to talk to the kids about water conservation and tips on water saving! Should be fun!

I ran off a quick poster with all the details, here it is!

So that is what we have to look forward to next week! Should be awesome!

Until then, I'll just have to endure this Friday the 13th morning, ripe with muggy, overcast weather and in the meantime prep for our Summer Reading Club adventures next week! I'm going to be painting a lot of black mask templates, that's for sure! 

Oh! I also grabbed some of the pictures from the Mad Scientists and beautified the shelves with their art work! I love these colouring sheets! .... You might also notice that Chase's Crash of Rhinoceros (top right picture!) have sadly caught the chicken pox! Poor things!
Although speak of the weather, I just ran out to take a look outside and looks like that morning overcast didn't last for very long!

I'll end here with some wise words from the late Mr. Bradbury himself. 

Happy Reading!

Guest Wednesday! - EZ Rock's Jayne Garry! – Or the Story of how I will forever have glitter on my face… IT’S EVERYWHERE!

Jayne Garry (middle) surrounded by all our Mad Scientists, Young Professors, Rhonda (far left) and me! (far right!)

AWESOME fun-filled day today at the good ol’ Beaver Valley Public Library! While outside the heat and sun beat down its whip of fury and sweat, inside the library we all basked in the air-conditioned greatness like lazy cats do around the house on spongy couches!

Today while we had the absolute pleasure of hosting the second meeting of the Young Professors (you can see my previous blog post about that here: http://beavervalleylibrarykids.blogspot.ca/2012/07/week-2-biggest-fastest-first-with-young.html), we were also amazingly able to have our first Guest Wednesday of the Summer! 

The fabulous Jayne Garry of our local radio station EZ Rock, graced us with her loveliness and amazing voice, bringing along her mother and two cute children to join our group for the day! All in all we had 16 kids! Yay!

While lots of kids came in earlier before 1 o’clock, I set up our craft and let the early birds grab the worm! – or in this case the comfy seats and a fun colouring sheet (you can print out your own  Summer Reading Club, Strange … But True? Colouring sheets at the kids SRC website here: http://www.kidssrc.ca/quizzes.htm)

When Jayne arrived, nice and prompt, she also came in with an awesome surprise! She brought some swag and goodies for the kids! Also she carried along a huge poster board showing pictures of the history of the radio station! I introduced Jayne to the kids and they all behaved lovely and sat very well in their seats! 

Jayne told a whole bunch of awesome stories, the kids learnt about the radio station, about Jayne’s career and where its taken her, and I think her talk also inspired the kids into thinking about their own future careers. Jayne told stories of how when she was a child, she and her younger sister would pretend play that they were radio announcers and make up their own stories to tell. She also shared some stories of interesting people she’s had to interview in the past, such as, Rick Hanson and even a brief encounter with Jerome Iginla! One story the kids loved that Jayne told us was about how one special occasion for her job she had to go to Disneyland (it might’ve been world… but I’m going out on a limb and saying land!) The kids loved it! Some of them even said excitedly “so, you got paid to go to Disneyland!??!” 

She also shared a strange fact, which I loved! It tied in perfectly with our theme: Strange … But True? Now, apart of the atmosphere, the ionosphere has a strange characteristic in that AM radio waves bounce off it and travel back to the earth. So countries far away can pick up signals from countries even further away!

After her presentation, we gave out applause and Jayne bestowed her gifts to each Mad Scientist and Young Professor in attendance!

We then set to our crafts!

 Now let me first start off by telling you a backstory! So after the Young Professors club in the morning I reset the Children’s Section of the library and added craft tables, covered in newspaper! And chairs arranged in audience formation towards the bulletin board where Jayne would present.

So the craft today was to tie in the idea of communication – since Jayne spoke about the news and radio and how influential it is in people’s lives. We decided, then, that we would do the classic tin cans on string telephones – substituting the tin cans for plastic cups (it still works, just not as well!) since we didn’t want anyone cutting themselves on a rough edge. Anyways, for my example I foolishly decided to paint the inside and add glitter to the paint, for me it was simple, easy and didn’t take too long to dry.

But when I showed the kids my example today, I didn’t realize that they would all decide to do glitter as well! Rhonda, wisely saw the disaster while I was setting up, saying something like “oh, my girls are going to go crazy over that glitter”. If only I had listened!!!

Hahahaha, long story short (too late) the library is now covered in glitter! Myself, included! I didn’t realize until Jayne pointed it out to me but glitter infected my face like a bad case of acne and I came to work (at the theatre) and my boss, Lisa, and customers even! have been doing that thing where instead of looking you in the eye, you can feel their eyes wandering over your face, questioning “what the---?”. Oh well!

But really even with the massive tornado of sparkles that looks to have past through the library, this Guest Wednesday (my first Guest Wednesday) was awesome! I enjoyed listening to Jayne’s presentation! I loved how her little daughter perpetually danced around her, and how her son quizzed me on mathematics that no average grade 3 student would know!

I hope the kids had fun! They all glitzed up their telephones with glitter, feathers, pompoms and gobs and gobs of liquid glue, that may take a century to dry! They even naturally gravitated towards the height chart and measured themselves on the wall! Still no one has beat Robert Wadlow!

So that was our first Guest Wednesday! I would like to reiterate my extreme gratitude to Jayne Garry and EZ Rock Radio for being so easy to get into contact and so supporting to our library! We had such a great time!

Here are some more pictures from our day! Enjoy! Happy Reading! 

Guest Wednesday! Jayne Garry EZ Rock Radio!

Yay! Are first Guest Wednesday is coming up this week! So Wednesday, July 11th, we will be welcoming the great Jayne Garry to our humbly-bumbly home at the Beaver Valley Public Library!

I grew up waking up to my alarm clock blaring off the morning show on the radio, where Jayne works! So phoning her last week was a little odd! Plus my horrible awkwardness on the phone is never helpful! But Jayne was really nice! And I'm exciting for her presentation! She be sharing about her career at the Radio Station and then afterwards we're thinking of doing the classis tin cup/string telephones for the kids to make and decorate! To tie into the theme of radio and communication!

Should be fun!

Hot of the Presses!

Woot! woot! 

So to the achievements of the day! I have booked off all our Guest Wednesdays!! The Guest Wednesdays are an addition to the Summer Reading Club! They occur on - guess when? - every Wednesday! and we invite community members, groups and companies to present their own craft/story/activity/presentation to the kids from both the Young Professors group and the Mad Scientists group! 

So anyone interested in sending their kids our way on a sunny - hopefully sunny - Wednesday, please be sure to register your lovely kids to each Wednesday Event, as we will need to prepare for the number of kids attending! 

So here I'll post the calendars I ran off today, and just click on 'em to get a bigger view of them - makes it easier to read!

Have a good weekend everyone! Enjoy that sunny sunshine :)