As a child, I loved playing "library". To tell you the truth, I think it had something to do with those little library cards in pockets housed at the back of the books. I simply loved stamping them and changing the dates on the stamp and all that. Nowadays, the pockets, cards with return dates and stampers have pretty much disappeared from libraries. When my children accidentally find an empty pocket at the end of a book we borrowed from the library, they always ask me what it's for. :) Times are changing... As such, for our library pretend play station, there was sadly no stamper with cards and pockets (although I DID consider it). Instead, the entirety of that was replaced by a "simple" scanning device such as the one we use at our own library! :) The weather was gorgeous and warm this week by the way so we played outside. (I apologize in advance for the glare in the pictures!).
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| Reading Outside...A great idea on a warm day! Here, a book display at the story time table. |
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| A library shelf featuring a child's astronomy section...and a record player... |
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| Lots of books on planets in our library that day. Tried to pick according to the kids' interests to make play time even more fun! |
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| The computer area of our library...Very popular. My son had forgotten all about his "laptop" actually! :) |
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| Our library also featured a few DVDs to check out. We have hundreds of family DVDs but bringing them all out would have been insane so I made a selection: princesses and Thomas & Friends |
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| The kids enjoying books "in the library" |
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| Library check out system. Also had some free bookmarks for grab, a poster advertising Story Time and a fundraiser! |
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| Our library fundraiser: gummy worms for bookworms! :) These were very popular indeed! Bag topper: Simple As That |
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| Story Time table: I'm sure you've guessed that our theme was Maisy Mouse? Both my kids love the rodent so I dedicated the table to her. I borrowed new books from our library too. |
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| After story time was over (we read 3 new Maisy stories), I showed "Create with Maisy" and invited the kids to do one of Maisy's crafts! They were thrilled and we've been doing one a day ever since! |
Library Pretend Play is pretty much a classic station but I felt this one required a bit more involvement on my part as I did read the stories. I do prefer when pretend play is really all about the kids doing the actions and using their imagination. Also, the kids didn't enjoy this set up as much as the grooming salon and shoe store we did previously. I think the warmth of the day (that redness on the cheeks ain't from rouge!) had to do with it but it might also have been due to the fact that there wasn't enough to "pretend about/with". Once they were done looking at the books (and they knew 90% of them), they wanted to move on to story and craft time. That was the best part for them for sure. Oh well. So what's next? Well, they are forecasting a heat wave for us so I think we might be heading to the car wash station next week but if the heat ceases or if the thunder clouds roll in, we'll pick another station from our line up of pretend play stations!
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I love that you have taken your library outside :) I remember as a kid making library cards for all of my own books. Now I think there's an app you can use instead to setup your own library.
ReplyDeleteWhat can I say...The weather in our part of the world is not always great so when it is we take our fun out! :) We've done school outside and are planning to do all our pretend play outside too. I hadn't heard of the app but I found some printable library cards on someone's blog. I printed them and hesitated. I knew the kids wouldn't know what these were so I ended up not using them. I'll re-use them as "reader's progress" cards for my son in the fall instead...
DeleteThis is such a cute idea. I think my son would really dig it. :)
ReplyDeleteI think my kids were having an off day. Normally, they would have been all over this one but they were a bit "lethargic" that day due to the hot weather I think. Normally, they are all over books and lay outside on blanket to browse through but this time, they just wanted the stories and the crafts it seemed...:( I guess we'll have to do the art museum pretend play soon huh? :) Thanks for dropping by!
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