Read to Me selection

Storytime Ideas

This year's statewide summer theme is "Get Creative." Check the 2009 New Jersey Summer Reading website for some great artsy and creative storytime, craft, and other program ideas!

Imagination
Art uses his imagination to create fantastic doodles and pictures. Incorporate some other stories where children use their imagination, like Keat's Regards to the Man in the Moon or Schaefer's The Squiggle or one of Antoinette Portis's books like Not a Box or Not a Stick.

• Draw a simple line on paper or a chalk board, and have each child come up and add to the drawing. In between each artist, have the children guess what they think the finished picture will show.
• Bring in a few simple objects - kitchen colander, towel, coffee can - and have the children come up with different things each one could be.
• Bring in a box of props and clothing and have each child choose an object or piece of clothing. After each child has chosen, have them tell the group who they are based on what they have picked. Fancy hats, scarves, jewelry, larger swatches of material, masks, and parts of old Halloween costumes all work well with this activity.

Words and Language
McDonnell uses a lot of word play and rhyme in Art. Match this with a few other books on word play. (Some are listed as companion books for this title.) Play some word games: telephone (also called gossip), MadLibs, fill-in-the-blank rhyming games like "Down by the Bay," and guessing games like "Who am I," where you give clues based on what the person or animal might be like.

Opposite Art
Pair Art with a book where a child can't draw well, like Elizabeth Rusch's A Day with No Crayons. Have the children make a picture without using crayons, markers, or paint. Instead give them leftover craft supplies - feathers, scraps of paper, buttons, yarn, pompoms, craft sticks to have them create a piece of No Crayon Art.

Paint
Along with Art, read stories about paintings and artists, like Art Dog by Thacher Hurd, Emily's Art by Peter Catalanotto, or Nina Laden's funny When Pigasso Met Mootisse.

• Using large pieces of paper - cut from a roll or taped together - have the children all work on a collective painting to be displayed in the library. This can be done by giving each child a section to draw on, or, for even more fun, try giving each child a turn and creating a Jackson Pollack style splatter art mural.
• Paint without brushes using a variety of objects - q-tips, pencil erasers, pieces of sponge, cotton balls, crumpled plastic bags - to have the kids explore the different results
• With slightly older children you can experiment with pixel or dot art. After making a simple drawing, explain to the kids that they must color it in using only dots of paint. No smearing allowed!