One of the crafts we set out for Black History Month was this 28 Days of Black History booklet. It was loosely inspired by Tanya G Marshall's resources to go along with 28 Days: Moments In Black History That Changed the World by Charles R. Smith Jr. 

This is mainly biographical but does include one page for the Tuskegee Airmen. 

I wanted to have an assortment of figures and pulled from different books we have in the library about prominent African American figures from history and contemporary. 

 

Here's a list of who is included:

• Jesse Owens
• Harriet Tubman
• Bessie Coleman
• Barrack Obama
• Shirley Chisholm
• Madam CJ Walker
• Muhammad Ali
• Simone Biles
• Rosa Parks
• Jason Reynolds
• Michael Jordan
• Katherine Johnson
• Thurgood Marshall
• Tuskegee Airmen
• Angela Davis
• Mae Jemison
• Martin Luther King Jr. 
• Misty Copeland
• John Lewis
• Leah Chase (this is the woman who inspired Disney's Princess and the Frog)
  
• Frederick Douglass
• Ruby Bridges
• Charles Henry Turner
• Serena Williams
• George Washington Carver
• Jackie Robinson
• Maya Angelou
• Bass Reeves

Each booklet takes about 8 (?) pages to print so it does involve using up some paper. 

Assembly: Once printed off, each page was cut along the dotted line, put in chronological order and stapled into a booklet.

If this is something you're interested in, here's the link to the PDF.

Click HERE for the LINK but keep reading for some tidbits about printing . . . 

Tidbit #1: If you can, print (1) front and back and (2) flip on the short edge

Tidbit #2: This is only relevant if you want to save paper. There will be an odd number of pages in the assembled booklet so to save paper, I made pages 15 & 16 of the PDF identical. Here's a visual to explain better what I want to say . . .

If possible, I would suggest setting a custom print of 1-14 for the exact number of booklets you need. Because PDF pages 15 & 16 will give you 2 identical booklet pages, print off half the number you need for those pages.

 

 

 

So here's the thing...

I started reading the Wings of Fire series and because school is starting up, this line stuck out to me despite it being an insult. However, I went on to make a bookmark for it and printed them out and got them ready, all that jazz.

Fast forward to when it comes time to pass them out and I can't for the life of me decide whether this is an insulting bookmark or not! 

What do you think? Let me know because I honestly have no idea! Part of me says I'm overthinking this and the kids will love the Wings of Fire reference and bookmark. 

Anyway...

Click here for the PDF 

 For a while, we've been using the LEGO spinning wheel to decide what our challenges will be. 

... And it was time for a change. 

This change included coming up with all new building challenges. Here are printable cards of the Lego challenges I came up with. However these cards were made just for you!

 For our library program, I used these challenges and made a Lego challenge scratch off poster. More on that below.

Instead of the wheel, I wanted an equally exciting reveal at the beginning of LEGO Hour and this is the scratch off poster I came up with.

The concept? At each LEGO Hour, one person would be chosen to pick a square to scratch off. Whatever the revealed challenge is, we would do.

This is what it looks like completed...

It is a full poster board, with Lego's drawn all over it. My intention is to let non-builders or itty(ish) bitty's color the blocks while the others are building. 

Instructions for how to DIY the scratch off came from The Wonder Forest Blog.

After the first coat of my paint + soap mixture. 

And that's all I have to share with you! Happy Building 😁

 

 

If you're printing and cutting these out for kiddos, here's a different copy that fits 2 dino's per page so you can save paper! No PDF of this one.

Click HERE for PDF link of the dinosaur bracelet.

Again, if printing for a group, here's 4 per page. 

Apparently there are 2 different ways to do these? When looking up how to word instructions I realized several methods involved cutting the main image (in this case, triceratops) in half and gluing it to the matching wristband end. 

Originally, I was just using this bottom method where you color the dino, cut it out, snip along the dotted line and slot the slits together. Either way, they're both cute.

A simple printable card template for kids. Print it out, color it and cut it out! Doesn't get much simpler than that, does it?

This printable unicorn card was inspired by Simple Everyday Mom's DIY Unicorn Card Craft For Kids. While hers is AMAZING, it required too many steps for our library kids to do so I designed this one.

There's not much to it, so without further ado...

Printable Unicorn Card PDF

For best results, print this out one card per sheet. I experimented with 2 ponies per card but they were too small and harder to cut out.

This entry will contain templates to one weaving and two feather crafts. These are Native American inspired and were used in our Covid-19 summer to-go craft kits in lieu of our in-house programming.

The story that went along with these was "When Turtle Grew Feathers" by Tim Tingle. This is a Choctaw version of Aesop's "The Tortoise and The Hare".

Crafts were prepped and packaged in brown paper sacks. They were set out on tables for families to come in and pick up. During this time, we also began curbside service so families could call in to ask for a kit and have it delivered to them outside of the building.

Crafts aimed at tween aged children and would be good for a school-aged book club.

 Paper Weaving

The Choctaw Indians used river cane to weave baskets for everyday use such as storing food, carrying items and trapping animals during hunts. Many women used natural dyes to add color and patterns to their baskets.

This craft lets kids practice their own weaving skills.

Print out the template on paper - I used cardstock for the base and construction paper for the strips.

There are 2 sheets on the PDF. The first sheet with the turtles is the base and the second sheet is for the strips of paper.

Instructions: Print out pages. Cut along the thin black lines on the page with turtles. Do NOT cut the thicker lines at the top. Weave the paper through so that the turtle images are covered. This is the basic foundation of weaving.

Instructions aren't on the PDF, just the printable pattern. This can also be done with regular copy paper.

Click here for the Paper Weaving PDF


Feather Quill 
Original idea comes from Krokotak.com and was actually used last year during our Harry Potter Finale last year. In fact, we were able to use our leftover supplies from that.

All that's needed is pens and/or pencils. Print the template onto construction paper, color it, cut it out and attach it to your writing utensil.Tape or glue works fine.

Easy peasy.

This was the template used (...I like to squeeze as many things onto a page as I can) but visit the link above for the original template!

Feather Bookmark

This was partially swiped from my coworker who has been focusing on crafts for 2nd grade and
under. She had found this adorable feather template for her kiddies to color and I loved it.

Supplies for this craft were colored cardstock, these feathers printed onto copy paper, clear contact paper, and ribbon (optional). Then of course scissors and coloring utensils were used by the kids to complete.

The contact paper should be more than double the width of the bookmark.

Each kid received 1 feather, 1 bookmark sized piece of colored cardstock ( sized to be larger than the feather) precut ribbon and pre-cut contact paper.

Step 5

Instructions: 
1. Color feather before cutting out. 
2. Attach feather to one side of the cardstock using tape or glue. 
3. Flip bookmark over and attach ribbon to top of cardstock.
4. Using clear contact paper, fold sticky side around the front and back of your bookmark. Make sure you do not trap your ribbon inside the contact paper! You want it to dangle out of the top so that it will stick out of your marked book.
5. Cut excess contact paper from sides  

There were two crafts for our Knights and Dragon weekly summer kits: Dragon Paper Chain and a Knight's Shield. It also included a writing prompt and shield templates to design your own crest on. Unfortunately, this kit wasn't as creative as some of the others, but this is what I've got!

Dragon Paper Chain

This printable dragon paper chain template, as pictured above, is very straightforward.

Dragon face comes from Mr. Printables.com. Originally it was a face mask, but I've scaled it down to purpose and blacked out the eyes.

On the PDF, the face has been outlined to be the same thickness as the wings... which were free handed with a Sharpie.

The body of the dragon is has 2 parts and should be printed front and back if possible.

On one side are scales to color and on the other side are prompts to answer. "If I had a time machine...", "I'm currently reading...", "My favorite book is..." things of that nature.

Click here for Printable Dragon Paper Chain PDF

The 2nd page is intentionally left blank.

Knight's Shield 

These were made with hot glue, cardboard, aluminum foil and a cutting tool.

I free handed a template that was 5½ inches from top to bottom. These were traced onto cardboard, cut out, wrapped in aluminum foil.

The final product can be seen in the beginning picture (that's a cat, btw).

On the back of the shield is a little handle to hold it. It fits just one finger and is a strip of cardboard, warped to create a shape. The tops and bottoms are hot glued to the back of the shield.

This was our prompt...

 Knights would have had colorfully decorated images called a coat of arms carved into their armor and embroidered onto clothes and flags. This helped identify who they were or who they supported. Being able to be
identified on a battlefield through a coat of arms would have been very important years ago. 

These emblems might have elaborate or simple geometric shapes, animals, flowers or other defining features. 

Certain objects or animals would mean different things: foxes symbolized intelligence, a lion meant courage and an elephant represented strength. 

Think about what defines you and create your own emblem based on those things. Take a moment to draw out your coat of arms on a piece of scrap paper.


 Here's the template that I made to trace on to my shields.

In addition to this, we also passed out a page with other shield shapes, as pictured in the beginning picture.

Click here for a PDF of those templates. 

In full disclosure, my coworker found those off so I have no idea where they came from!



Writing Prompt

Since our Summer Reading Program is all online, we've got more than a few reading logs from CSLP

Sideways? Blogger, why do you do this to me?

that we don't know what to do with!

We were able to give out reading logs for our writing prompt in these craft kits.

If you've read my DIY Journal post, this prompt might sound familiar to you!

I was sitting in class, day dreaming about all the things I'd rather be doing when I looked out the window and my jaw dropped. A giant Ender Dragon was circling the skies of our school! I raised my hand to tell the teacher when it suddenly it landed in the school yard. I knew what I had to do.

ago and the White Rabbit. This is the only front and back activity.
Click here to read more about the board

"The Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, is a nonsensical poem in Through the Looking Glass, one of the books in the Alice series. Many of the words are made-up words but the poem describes a beast.

There were really 2 separate prompts for this poem specifically. Kids were encouraged to read the poem, paying special attention to the words describing the beast and then draw a picture of what they think the Jabberwock would look like.

Then we turn our eye to similes and metaphors. In the poem, there is only one of these. Kids were tasked with finding it and then identifying it as either a simile or metaphor.

After doing that, they get to practice writing their own!