Mel's Desk

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If you want to try the new submissions process for Flannel Friday, read about it here or test it out: here’s the link to our Tumblr and here’s the link to our new submissions form.

Thank you!

Happy New Year!

Here are a few ideas to start off another awesome year of storytimes:

Look ahead to Valentines Day already with Storytime with Miss Tara! She has a set to go with Love Monster and the Last Chocolate. Now I’m hungry!

Fun with Friends at Storytime digs out an old pattern of mine and makes a train set. Great idea to number them, which I never thought of! I also love how she put them on a backing layer of felt–mine can be floppy and I bet this helps a lot.

A Little Miss Muffet vignette from FlannelBoard Fun! Nursery rhymes are great for background knowledge and vocabulary and this makes me want to up my Mother Goose game this year!

I didn’t pull together a flannelboard for this week, but I do have a Happy New Year card for you.

Thanks for kicking off the year with Flannel Friday!

Hey team, here we are in another year together, how awesome is that?

As you can tell, Mel’s Desk has been pretty much in mothballs since I became a supervisor three years ago. I miss it so much but it’s been smarter to let it go while I’ve tackled the steepest learning curve of my career.

I haven’t done any updates, I haven’t checked comments, I haven’t answered questions…but more than once over the past couple of months, totally out of the blue, I’ve been blessed to hear from friends and readers that Mel’s Desk is still serving as a resource and reference even in its cobwebby state. I am overwhelmed with gratitude that this is the case and I appreciate each of you who checks in from time to time and looks up a post or a pattern.

Looking ahead, I feel that I am approaching a cruising altitude again at work and I am hoping to take steps back into blogging over the spring and summer. I can’t wait to share my storytime experiences again and to hear what you’ve been thinking and learning over the last little while.

In the meantime:

[image of a light blue card with black lettering reading “here’s to many wonderful moments in 2018” above two banners of triangular pennants cut out of colored felt]

Hi team! It’s been so long since I was able to help out with Flannel Friday I am super happy to host this week!

Three cheers for our three entries:

As Kathryn says, “Not every child has a teddy bear as their lovey” so she made a flannelboard with lots of stuffed friends instead.

Speaking of Kathryn! Laura made a turtle set inspired by a post on Fun with Friends in Storytime!

ROBOTS! Robots are always a win. Combine that with Mouse in the House and you have Heather’s entry!

And my sea monsters are here!

Thanks for stopping by!

I’m hosting Flannel Friday this week so wanted to create something for the round up!

Awhile ago I made a set of Aliens to go with my Outer Space Set. I love them and the kids think they are silly, so I’ve been meaning to make a set of sea monsters I could use with my Ocean Set.

I loved that my aliens all had different number of eyes, so I wanted to duplicate that with the sea monsters, but instead of the mostly straight lines and angles, I wanted to have all rounded curvy shapes for squishy sea creatures.

So here they are!

I will probably sing this:

“One monster went out to play
In the ocean waves one day
It had such enormous fun
That it called for another sea monster to come.

Oh, MONSTER!

Two monsters….”

I have the round up over here!

I’m taking the easy way out and just reposting a CLEL email about the Bell Awards! There’s still time to let the Selection Committee know about great picture books that support early literacy for the 2017 awards!

“The CLEL Bell Award committee has been hard at work searching for the best books published this year that support the early literacy practices. Take a look at all the amazing titles that have been nominated so far! There are still new books hitting our shelves and the deadline to nominate is approaching. We need your help to make sure that no great book is missed! If you’ve read a fabulous picture book this year that encourages families to Read, Write, Sing, Talk or Play that you don’t see on our nominations page, please suggest it. The final day to suggest a title is November 30th!

We would also love to hear about your experience reading the nominated books in your storytimes, classrooms, or with your own children. Join the conversation on Goodreads by joining the Bell Awards for Early Literacy Discussion Group.”

I had just three families, four kids who were probably 3-6 years old. They were a little active, and a lot talkative, and I was still (am still) struggling with this week’s news, and I wound things up a little early and got out our toys for play time.

As I put away my storytime books, they played with different toys, paired up in different combinations, and I heard one girl come over to another and say, “Can we share?” and the answer was, “Yes.”

I heard the older boy who was playing with the Wedgit blocks call to me, “Look! Look what she figured out! Now we can build like this!” And he went back to playing with the younger girl, taking turns stacking and building together.

As I was packing up the toys, I saw the three moms, one Asian-American, one Black, one white, huddled with their kids at the back of the room, ask each other their children’s names, and say to their kids, “Josh, this is Stephanie. Let’s say hello!” and “Stephanie, say hi to Lucia!”

It is not inconsequential that a mom is raising her daughter to ask to join in rather than take what she wants.

It is not inconsequential that a mom has taught her child to say, “Yes!” when someone else wants to play.

It is not inconsequential that a mom is raising her son to be excited about a younger girl’s discovery or to give credit for that discovery to her.

It is not inconsequential that we, libraries, offer a safe place for all families to come together and be community to each other. To raise up our children together.

These children are our future, this is true, but they are also each other’s present, each other’s NOW.

That’s not inconsequential, either.

Welcome to Flannel Friday!

Liberry Becca has a lovely summer firefly set–fabulous details on her colorful fireflies, and a wonderfully realistic looking jar to catch them in! She includes links to several rhymes and her own fireflies storytime. PLUS she did something JUST IN CASE she ever does a storytime in the dark, can you guess what? Also: totally jealous since Colorado does not have fireflies irl. *sigh*

Kate at Felt Board Magic has an Apple Seed Counting set that is going to be super tempting as inspiration this fall! You can use this set for counting, but also sequencing, matching, and sorting.

I’m blown away by the masterful cutting and layering on Michelle’s bugs for her Bugs in a Rug at Friday Story Time! Go look at the butterfly! I was JUST looking at patterned felt today at the store and DIDN’T BUY ANY and now I regret it!

Miss Mouse gets a run for her money from PETE THE CAT in Amy’s great twist on the classic hide and seek game! Of course Pete hides behind sneakers! This is so simple and I am already thinking of other iconic characters who could take turns hiding instead of Pete. The link is Looking for Pete the Cat at One Little Librarian.

You were thinking just last week that you needed to do a beards and mustaches storytime, weren’t you? Admit it. Well, Library Village has got your back with their version of a Sunflower Storytime original rhyme Mr Lou’s Mustache. (Library Village learned it from Literacy Hoots, who got it from Sunflower Storytime, I love Flannel Friday SO MUCH.)

It’s Sunny Days over at Fun with Friends at Storytime! Kathryn has a simple but effective Sizzix based sun with a VERY SHINY smile…go check out how! Free hand clouds and some puffy paint finish up her set, but there’s lots of other sunny ideas and links. (Kathryn was inspired by One Little Librarian this week. MORE Flannel Friday LOVE!)

Wendy has a mix and match monster set designed for kids to use independently. Great color choices here and awesome shapes! Now I’m thinking what else could be made into a build-your-own set…flowers…trees…bugs…great idea!

And I expanded my Things That Go set with a few more vehicles and a few more places to make them go!

Thanks for checking out the round up today, and thanks especially for our bloggers!

Find out more about Flannel Friday at our website, see all the past ideas at our Pinterest, and hang out with us on Facebook.

I couldn’t resist adding more to the Things That Go set I started a couple of months ago! Here’s what I started with:

Plane & Sky
Rocket & Space
Train & Tracks
Ship & Ocean
Car & Road

Tonight I added a few new places and a few more vehicles!

Now I have a hot air balloon for the sky, a Denver RTD bus for the road, a UFO for outer space, a Radio Flyer for the walking path, a submarine for the ocean (Hi, Nemo!), and both a toboggan and a little red sled for the snow.

I’m still thinking about more things! I could make a yellow school bus and some kind of truck for the road, a kayak and a rowboat for the water…I am SERIOUSLY tempted to make a Zamboni and some ice…I tried to make a sidewalk but wasn’t happy with it!

So there just may be Part Three later on!

Happy Flannel Friday!

Awhile ago Bryce asked a few people she knew if they’d be willing to make a Summer Reading pep talk video, just for fun, that she could share with the staff at her libraries to cheer them on.

Cheer???

Yes, please!

Here’s my entry: me and my teens in our backyard, performing The Library Cheer. I love this cheer. I taught it to my storytime team last December when I gave everyone cheap pompoms and we cheered for our accomplishments in 2015. Plus we ate cookies. Anyway, I *swear* my first library boss taught this to me (which would have been mid-90s), but now I can’t find it online except for here (mid-2000s): Library Cheer (on the no-longer-updated Library Advocate blog), so if you have an earlier citation, I’d love to know about it!

PS: If there’s one thing that I knew but I really truly finally learned for sure in the last 2 years of New-Supervisordom, it’s that saying, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” Exhibit A is this video! Getting the good (or not-so-good even) thing done is a solid first step and will give you something to revise and polish as you go. So many times, doing something imperfectly-but-well-enough-for-now beats not doing anything…OR beats doing something SUPER well but kind of chewing yourself up in the process. (Trust me, I’ve tested both alternatives.)

I hope your summers are giving you something to cheer about–I’m cheering for YOU!