"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." Albert Einstein

22 July 2016

Librarian Toolbox: Simplify Your Craft


I do crafts each week at the conclusion of my storytimes. Because I have a fairly wide range of young children at these programs, it's important that any craft I do can be easily completed by someone as young as three. The parents are present during the story and craft, but I like for the crafts to be do-able for even my young patrons. After all, they are the ones who benefit from small muscle practice as a pre-writing and reading exercise.

I also like to use googly eyes on just about everything. They're fairly cheap and they add an extra level of cute to many projects. So this past week when we were making our spoon insects, I wanted to give the kids googly eyes to add to their spoons, but was trying to find an easy way to attach them. Older kids could use white glue and a little patience, but little ones struggle with both of those.

That's when I discovered this. I bought a package of glue dots, pulled the strip of dots out of the box, and placed a googly eye on each glue dot. [In the future I can have a teen volunteer do this.] Now I have a strip of googly eyes that already have adhesive on them and I can tear off pairs of eyes for the kids to use. If I need more, I can make them easily.


I used these googly eyes during our craft and was delighted to see even my youngest patrons making their projects completely on their own. Their caregivers didn't have to make the entire craft for them, and the kids got the bonus practice of peeling a googly eye "sticker" off of the paper and sticking it on their craft.

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