Kitchen Café Play

Stop by the Puett Room Monday February 20 through Friday, February 24 during story time break and use your imagination! From 10 a.m.-3 p.m. each day explore our cardboard kitchen and pantry stuffed with toy pots,pans and food.  Cook fabulous meals and make your own recipe cards.  Everyone can become a famous chef, just stir your imagination into the mix and serve up something marvelous.  Don't forget to check out our great selection of cookbooks before you go home! 

Thinker Tinker Lab ~ Geoboard String Art

S.T.E.A.M.

Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math
Join us in the Library Puett Room 2-4 pm * July 18 * All ages

Egyptian mathematician Dr. Caleb Gattegno inventor of the geoboard believed education should be process of enhancing knowledge through problem based learning.

Exploring mathematical concepts and puzzles with geoboards is a fun way to develop understanding of the mathematical tapestry of geometric shapes and how art and geometry go hand in hand.


Playing with geoboards enhances fine motor skills, visual co-ordination and depth perception.  Participants seamlessly gain understanding of shapes, rotation, similarity, counting, angles, patterns, perimeters and just plain all kinds of hands on fun!

Run Wild with Puppets!

                     

Let your imagination RUN WILD with a puppet from the Library!
 

Come on in and see our new and exciting assortment of puppets available for check-out! 

What research says about puppet play:

• Loving interactions with people and exploring objects are as necessary to a child's brain development as food is.
• Sensory experiences and social interactions build brain connections for future learning.
• Multi-sensory, playful, and interactive experiences linked with language and books create profound memory connections in the brain.
• Playing is just plain fun!

Our puppet collection is quite durable and will last through many exciting imaginary adventures. If your puppet does get messy, please bring it back to the library with a 

note.  We’ll take it from there.  Please do not put your puppet in the washing machine or dryer. They Can’t swim.  Thanks!

The puppet collection is generously sponsored by Friends ofthe Tigard Public Library. 

Bunny Hop!

Come have some hoppin’ fun in the Library Puett room Monday, March 21st from 1:30-2:30 pm. The Beatrix Potter Society will present a lively short story followed by fun bunny crafts and activities for all ages.

Imagination in a Box!

"With nothing more than a little imagination, boxes can be transformed into forts or houses, spaceships or submarines, castles or caves. Inside a big cardboard box, a child is transported to a world of his or her own, one where anything is possible." - National Toy Hall of Fame

We are on a story time break this week, but that doesn't mean you can't bring the whole family to the Puett Room any time during open hours for some open-ended, Imaginative box play February 22-26! The Puett Room will be filled to the brim with boxes of all shapes and sizes just waiting for you!

Unstructured play with cardboard without an end result builds creativity, imagination and resourcefulness. It's inexpensive fun that will keep your child and you engaged for hours and hours of mindful play!    

December LEGO® Construction Zone

Calling all future engineers and mathmeticians! 
 

Drop in to work on your LEGO® creations with other builders and give our race track a spin!  We'll supply all the building blocks; you bring the creativity!  This month we'll play on Sunday December 27th at 1:30-3:00 p.m. in the Puett Room and kids ages 5 and up are welcome to attend.
 

 

Becoming Nicole

Wayne Maines was a man's man who was raised in a rural community with conservative, moral values. His wife, Kelly, came from a similar background. After multiple miscarriages, the opportunity to adopt fell into their laps. And when they found out they were having twins, they couldn't have been happier.

Wayne dreamed of the day when his identical twin sons, Jonas and Wyatt, would be old enough to experience the male bonding that goes along with hunting and fishing. Jonas seemed right on track to help him fulfill this dream. But from the age of 2, Wyatt began to show signs that the dream may never come true. As the years passed, it became apparent that Wyatt was not like most boys. Though Kelly followed Wyatt's lead and supported him every step of the way, Wayne just could not bring himself to terms with the idea that one of his sons may actually be his daughter. Until he realized that he really had no choice.

Through bullying, discrimination, court orders, lawsuits, counseling, medical interventions and family growth, Wyatt became Nicole, the girl she had always been.

In my opinion, the one weakness of the book is the way the author refers to Nicole as being "born a boy." She never was a boy. She was assigned male at birth but was always a girl. Becoming Nicole, by Amy Ellis Nutt, is a look at the transformation of a family, and in a way, a community and even a country. It also is a great source of information regarding the science of being transgender and the way the American culture and other cultures view transgender people.

STE(a)M Saturday

Looking for a STEM activity for your youngster? Do you have some newspapers laying around, waiting to be recycled? Then look no further. An exercise in the engineering process is just around the corner.

• You will need at least a issue of a daily newspaper
• Tape or Stapler
• Other recycled materials

You can find an explanation of the process here.
Check out the need play structure these guys built here.
This project is ideal for the 3-6th grader, however, younger and older participants can be coaxed into helping. A newspaper tube can be made for the younger child for her to work with while the older child might be convinced to make a more complex structure.

STEAM Saturday

At the heart of every scientist, mathematician, musician, or artist is a person who is willing to tinker.The scientist tests and retests (or tinkers with) theories. A musician will work and rework (tinker with) a song before it's finished.
Which leads to me to recommend one of my favorite new books for parents who want to nurture the "tinkerer" in their child. It's called Tinkerlab: A hands-on guide for little inventors by Rachelle Doorley

Doorly poses that the only way to really get to know a subject or process or material is to work with it long enough, over and over again, so that to the tinkerer gets to the place where she can see it or use it in new ways. There are so many fantastic ideas in this book and on her blog! I especially like her quote,

"When children are encouraged to solve problems on their own, they learn a great deal through the questions and hands-on experiements that lead to a solution."

If you use this book for nothing else, use it for the 10 Tinkerlab Habits of Mind

• Make room for creativity
• Encourage questions
• Listen actively
• Be curious
• See mistakes as gifts
• Embrace a good mess
• Accept boredom as a tool for self-discovery
• Step back ad enjoy the flow
• Spend time outdoors
• Think of everything as an experiement.

What are you waiting for? Get tinkering!

Origami Workshop

 

Try your hand at Japanese paper-folding! 

Join us in the Puett Room Sunday, February 1 from 1:30-2:30 p.m. Members of Tigard High School's Japanese National Honor Society will show you how to make simple, fun origami pieces.  Ages 5 and up.

 

2014 Mega Crafts Workshop

Come one, come all, to our annual crafting extravaganza!  Projects will abound for all ages, from cards and decorations to crafts suitable for gift giving. Join us in the Burgess Community Room Sunday, November 30 from 2-4 p.m.

Generously sponsored by Friends of the Tigard Library

PUPPET PLAY TIME!

 Let you imagination RUN WILD with a puppet from the library!

Thanks to the continued and generous support from the Friends of Tigard Public Library, we now have a new, exciting assortment of puppets available for check-out!

Our Puppet collection contains a fabulous assortment of all shapes and sizes sure to delight and inspire imaginary adventures and conversations galore.

The puppet collection is quite durable and will last through many fun adventures.  Help us keep them looking fresh by following the guidelines below:

If you puppet gets messy, please bring it back to the library with a note.

Please do not put your puppet in the washing machine or dryer.  They can't swim.  Thanks!

Rock Stars! The building blocks of the earth beneath your feet!

 Ages 5 and up are invited to join us in the Puett Room from 1:30-2:30 p.m. on Sunday, August 18 to meet some REAL rock stars!  The Rice NW Museum of Rocks and Minerals will be on hand to answer your questions about rocks and minerals and tell you how to start your very own collection!
Participants will get to choose their very own rock pal to take home along with some great handouts.

Mary, Mary quite contrary how do your Readers Grow?

"The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery."  Erik H. Erikson.

As a child, my friend and I passed our free time at home doing what looked like nothing much at all.  Laying around in the grass, collecting wild flowers, rocks, sticks, pine cones, assorted snakes and hundreds and hundreds of woolly bears!  Which by the way, got out in my bedroom!  But that’s another story. 

Truly one of our favorite childhood summer wanderings involved making mud pies.  One summer we meticulously made and decorated  hundreds of chocolaty colored mud confections with my father's shaving cream.  We added flowers from my mother's garden and the most perfect rocks and sticks from our collections carefully adorned each gooey top.

We discussed everything about our beautiful creations. How many layers they should have? Should we use her father's worm mix?
Or better yet, his worms for the filling!  Should we hire the neighborhood boy we had a crush on for help? Who should be in charge of turning off the hose and digging the dirt? And of course, who should be the boss of the shop?



Our freewheeling unencumbered play allowed us to construct the most successful neighborhood bakery in summer vacation history! As we added each delicious ingredient to our make-believe play: imagination, concentration, cognitive skills, internal verbalization, conversation, persistence, problem-solving and growing task building skills we made up our own rules.  

We sold our sunbaked goodies to the neighbor kids who paid with marbles, cool colored rubber bands
and gum wrapper chains. Social networking at its finest. 

Our bold entry into the business world was constructed with endless scenarios and conversations that lasted all summer long.

Little did we know that as we surmounted each challenge of our imaginative enterprise, we were learning how to self-regulate our own behaviors which is an essential pre-literacy ingredient.  We enthusiastically contributed to the foundation of our own house of higher learning and ultimately our ability to read.

Who knew you could do all this playing with mud pies!

Suggested Reads:

A Child's Work: the importance of fantasy play by Vivian Gussin Paley

Imagine Childhood: exploring the world through nature, imagination, and play by Sarah Olmsted