Suggested Family Activity • Aquarium 🎥 Cams Even if you can’t visit an aquarium in person this summer, you can always check out some of the great Aquarium Cams located at many facilities. The Monterey Bay, California aquarium has webcams so you can see live views of sea nettles, moon jellyfish, sardines and leopard sharks swimming through a kelp forest, as well as sharks and many other fish inside their aquarium. They even have live Read more…
Suggested Family Activity • Hand ✋ Imprints If you like to turn your child’s handprint into fun pieces of art, this week’s Summer Reading Theme of “Water Tales” will give you lots of ideas! If you take an imprint of their hand with the fingers facing down, you can turn it into a cute octopus by painting on a face in the palm area. Let them decorate an underwater scene around it – and don’t Read more…
Suggested Family Activity • National Pet 🐕 Fire 🔥 Safety Day Today is National Pet Fire Safety Day, a day set aside each year to help us to remember a few safety tips concerning our pets and the hazards of fire. Our pets are treasured members of our families and we would do anything to keep them safe. The ASPCA offers the following tips (additional information can be found on their website at https://www.aspca.org/news/fire-safety-and-your-pets-keeping-them-safe-unexpected): Keep Read more…
Suggested Family Activity • Cow 🐄 Appreciation Day Two different national days this week fit perfectly into our animal theme this summer – Cow Appreciation Day today and National I Love Horses Day tomorrow! So, take this time to appreciate the gently mooing creatures that give us great products such as milk and cheese. And in the case of horses, we honor how they have helped clear fields, worked on farms, served as reliable transportation, Read more…
Suggested Family Activity • National 🛍 Paper Bag Day Today is Paper Bag Day, a day set aside to remember all the various ways a paper bag can be used. We love using paper bags as a craft supply during arts and crafts projects. You can turn them into puppets, masks, windsocks, and many other items. You can also decorate plain paper bags with crayons, markers, paint, stickers, glitter, or any craft supply you have on Read more…
Suggested Family Activity • National 🐈 Kitten Day Tomorrow, July 10th, is National Kitten Day, the perfect time to celebrate our cute and cuddly kitten friends. Send us pictures of your best kitty friends at summerreading@nereg.lib.ms.us. If you do not have a kitty right now but would like one, call or visit your local animal shelter to find the perfect new member of your family. Many shelters have rules for their adoption process, so check with Read more…
Suggested Family Activity • Games 🎳 Tic Tac Toe Introduce young children to the fun of the classic Tic Tac Toe game this week. To put a fun spin on it, make your own game and let them help. For regular sized versions, simply use painter’s tape or another colored tape to create a tic tac toe board on a large sheet of paper (or on a blank stretch of your floor or outside on a Read more…
Suggested Family Activity • Art 🎨 Collage The world of children’s literature was saddened recently to lose two wonderful children’s book authors. Eric Carle brought the natural world to life through such titles as The Very Hungry Caterpillar and A House for Hermit Crab. His beautiful artwork was made by layering hand-painted and tinted tissue paper together to create colorful images. Later in life, he created the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amhurst, Read more…
Suggested Family Activity • Wild Kratts 🦇 Creaturepedia Generations of children have learned about the amazing world of animals through the adventures of zoologists Chris and Martin Kratt, first through their PBS show “Zoboomafoo” and now with their current show “Wild Kratts.” The PBS Kids website has a special Wild Kratts section with tons of amazing features – ideas for craft projects, games such as “Amazin’ Amazon Adventure” and “Baby Animal Rescue,” and of course, Read more…
Suggested Family Activity • Painted 🎆🧨 Fireworks With the 4th of July weekend upon us, try out this fun art project with your family to make some painted fireworks: You’ll need scissors, paper, paint, a plate (a disposable paper plate works great!), and several inner carboard tubes from a roll of toilet paper. You can also use the inner cardboard roll from paper towels or even wrapping paper, but you will probably want to cut Read more…
