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…
Suggested Family Activity • Animal 🏁 Racing 🐢🐇 If you are looking for some fun outdoor activities to do this weekend, check out these instructions for Animal Racing, courtesy of the website education.com: Find a big open space, preferably outdoors, with nothing around that can be knocked over. Warm up and stretch! Have your child warm their joints up and get the blood flowing to their muscles with jumping jacks and arm circles. Set up Read more…
Suggested Family Activity • 🦏Zoo 🦍 Cams SUMMER READING EDITION If you can’t make it to a zoo this summer, check out some of the fun Zoo Cams located at many zoos around the U. S. The nearby Memphis Zoo has live camera feeds on their pandas, hippos, elephants, and flamingos that you can watch any time of the day. Check it out at www.memphiszoo.org. The large San Diego Zoo in California has cameras watching Read more…
Suggested Family Activity • National 📷 Camera Day National Camera 📷 Day today gives us another opportunity to encourage everyone to take pictures of your Summer Reading Program activities during June and July. You could take a photo of your child (or an adult) reading to their pet or their stuffed animals or your family completing any of the fun activities in the NERL activity packets, watching one of our recorded Story Times, or doing Read more…
Suggested Family Activities: National Paul Bunyan Day Today is National Paul Bunyan Day, a day to remember the tall tale of Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox Babe. The giant lumberjack with tremendous strength is one of the most famous figures in North American folklore. To read up on Paul Bunyan and Babe, check out the children’s books Paul Bunyan, A tall Tale by Steven Kellogg (also available in Spanish) or The Bunyans by Read more…
Suggested Family Activities: Duck Duck Goose If you can find enough players this weekend, another classic game to try out is Duck, Duck, Goose. All players start off sitting in a circle on the floor. One person is picked to start off the game as the Tapper. The Tapper walks around the outside of the circle and lightly taps each seated player on the head, saying “Duck” with each tap until he or she randomly Read more…
Suggested Family Activities: Story Times Join us here LIVE at 2PM today for Virtual Story Time! Our Library Director, Dee Hare, will be reading Duck on a Tractor by David Shannon Have you checked out any of our Summer Reading Program Story Times yet? Various NERL staff are reading (either live or through recordings) lots of animals books this summer – one per day! “Farm Tale” recordings already available include Leigh Hood reading Hensel & Gretel: Read more…