namaste

It has been a very crazy week for me!  At the library I put up two displays (one that centered on a craft I did with the teens at my branch and another for St. Patrick's Day).  I'm not proud of either display so I'm not posting them.  But I did learn a lot from making them.

Unrelated to the library, I also finished an embroidery piece, which I'll post later, and completed the first layer of a collage I've been working on.  I've also got about six poems that are currently going through the grueling polishing process.

There was one day this week I realized I had been crafting, creating, cutting, writing, and pasting for 15 hours straight between work and home.  I was even working straight through meal times a couple days.  

But the most beautiful thing I helped create this week was definitely storytime.  It's the best storytime thus far.  I left with so much happiness and energy I had this cloud floating around me for a couple days.  

It wasn't my original plan to do a yoga storytime, but I had a deluge of materials flowing in thanks to my curiosity.  After the third yoga picture book I flipped through, I scrapped my original idea and threw myself into yoga.  After much deliberation, I chose From Head to Toe by Eric Carle and You are a Lion! by Taeeun Yoo.  Really, there were five amazing yoga picture books I fell in love with but I chose these two because I thought they would work best with my group.  And they did! Each book went through a series of poses that I demonstrated for the toddlers, and then they copied me.  We also made a few animal noises too. I used an adjustable book stand, the same one I use so I can read and eat at the same time, and found a short table so the books were at a good level.  The whole setup worked beautifully.  

The lion book used the word, Namaste, at the beginning and end of the book.  Initially, I wasn't sure what to do about this word.  And to be quite honest, I didn't really know what it meant.  So I looked it up, found out that it meant 'one soul acknowledging another soul,' and was even more confused.  I wasn't sure how the heck I was going to talk about this word with toddlers when my adult mind was struggling with it.  Before we read the book I told them what it meant and then added that it could mean one heart acknowledging another heart.  And that's when I did something unplanned.  I placed my hands on my chest, and then waved them towards everyone while saying namaste.  The toddlers loved this.  They loved both the word and the movement so much they repeated it several times throughout storytime.  It was such a beautiful thing, I cannot do it justice.  Imagine a three-year-old toddling up to you with his hands on his heart, and then right as he gets to you, he waves his fingers at you and says 'namaste' clear as can be.    

At my youth services meeting a couple weeks ago we did a storytime show and tell.  I know, show and tell for adults?!?  I was completely blown away.  Basically everyone shared their favorite and most successful storytime ideas (my favorites included shadow theater, the green monster puppet, a magic envelope with laminated pictures inside, and a weenie dog hat).  Any props shared during this time were available for checkout, which means someday I get to wear a weenie dog hat.  At the end someone mentioned a stretchy band thing they used for a yoga storytime but they forgot to bring it.  I immediately emailed this person after the meeting and asked her to send me the mysterious band as soon as she could spare it. Turns out, this stretchy band thing is called an elastaband, and it's this giant soft circle thing that's perfect for storytimes.  I found a couple yoga songs on a youth yoga cd and we used the band during the songs.  The toddlers struggled to form a circle, but a coworker suggested I tape a circle onto the floor next time.  That was really our only hiccup. After every child had their hands on the band, we had a moment where they just wanted to shake and pet it so I went ahead and embraced the moment and let them go bananas with it before starting the music.  

We sang "This Little Light of Mine" again, and just like previous times, I loved it, but I wondered to myself whether I should bring it out again next week.  After storytime a parent approached me and told me how much her daughter enjoyed the song and sign language.  She asked if I could incorporate even more sign language into future storytimes!  So it looks like I have something to think about and work on!

Also, at the end of storytime, while playing with the toddlers, a nanny approached me and told me how much her toddler loved the snowman song and sang it all the time (remember the melting snowman?).  So I asked the toddler if she wanted to sing it with me and that's exactly what we did.  She definitely did a better melting snowman than me! 

This weekend I'm going to continue with the yoga theme, particularly the corpse pose.