Thursday, July 24, 2008

Storytime

On Thursdays during the summer, our library has a story time. They read books to the kids, even acting some of them out, sing songs and do crafts. This year they have been focusing on stories from all over the world. So far we have heard stories from Africa, Asia, North America, and Australia. Mandy's favorite part of the story time is of course the songs. She loves to sing and do all of the motions. Dallin's favorite part is probably the craft. He loves making things and two weeks ago they made "talking sticks" like the aborigines use to send messages. He thought that they were so cool. He walked around the house with them afterwards banging them together to send messages. I got a little tired of it, but he enjoyed it. I am really glad that they enjoy books and I hope that we can teach them to love reading when they get older.
Now I need to take a moment and brag about my little smart boy Dallin. At this past week's story time they focused on stories from North America, specifically stories about the old west. At the beginning, the librarian briefly told everyone that at the end of story time that we would be doing Navajo sand art and she held up an example of the craft, which was a little square piece of sandpaper with a lizard, sun, and fish drawn on it. Then she put her sample away and read stories and did songs with the kids for about 30 minutes or so. At which time, she told all the kids to go to the tables at the side of the room and they could make their sand art. She didn't tell them what to draw on it and she didn't even hold her sample up again. But what do you think Dallin drew? He drew a lizard, the sun, and a fish. I was really surprised that after seeing the example art for only about 30 seconds and then sitting through 30 minutes of stories and songs that he remembered what he saw and replicated it. His drawing of the lizard was especially good and even went diagonally across the paper just like the librarian had drawn it. That may not be impressive to most people, but that was pretty impressive to me.

1 comment:

Nathan said...

Dallin is smart and definitely takes after his Mom. For that matter, Mandy is a lot like her too. Both smart and sweet!