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! 

Story Time Break

We will be on a Story Time break May 31-June 10th.  During this time, Youth Services staff will be out and about the community visiting schools and promoting the annual Summer Reading Program that begins on June 1st.  If you want to come to the library, we will have toys available to play with in the Puett Room during the week.

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. 

February LEGO® Construction Zone!

Drop in to work on making your own LEGO® creations with other builders.  We'll supply all the building blocks; you bring the creativity! This month we'll play on Sunday February 28th at 1:30-3:00 p.m. in the Puett Room. Kids ages 5 and up are welcome to attend.  Come and play for a few minutes or play for the whole 90 minutes.  The choice is yours!

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!    

National Grandparents Day

All ages WELCOME!

Show your appreciation of family by doing something grand at the library! Sunday September 13, from 1:30-2:30 p.m. in the Puett Room. We will be making our own special edible treats to enjoy while creating one-of-kind crafty keepsakes to give to those you love. 

Peter Pan and Tinker Bell Show

Calling all Neverland fans!  

Enter the land where Wendy keeps house and the lost boys roam.  Captain Hook is out to stop the boy who never wants to grow up, while Tinker Bell faces losing her best friend.  Only Peter and Tink's friendship can save their friends and each other.  This live dramatic show will be presented by Dragon Theater Princesses on Tuesday April 7th at 6:30 p.m. in the Burgess Community Room.  All ages are welcome to attend.

Lego® Construction Zone

One plus one is two. Two plus two is four. Four plus four is eight. Sound familiar? It all adds up to fun with Lego® bricks! Join us February 22 in the Puett Room from 1:30-3:00. We supply the bricks, you bring the skills.

Lego® Construction Zone

Bricks can make blocks and blocks can make worlds. Join us in the Puett Room Sunday, January 25 from 1:30-3:00 for a world of fun! Use your creativity to build a place of your own with kids like you who love to play with Lego® bricks.

Lego® Construction Zone

Maybe you're a future engineer. Maybe you're a kid who likes to build. Or maybe, you're just looking for something fun to do on a Sunday afternoon! Drop by the Puett Room December 28 and build amazing creations. We’ll supply the blocks, you bring imagination. The fun begins at 1:30 and lasts until 3:00.

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!

Story Time Break, May 27-June 7

This is just a reminder that we will be on a 2-week story time break from May 27th through June 7th as librarians will be busy getting ready for the summer reading program, which starts on June 1st.  And if you happen to stop by the library during our regular story time sessions, we'll have toys available in the Puett Room for your little one to play with!

Calling All Families with Preschoolers!

Do you want to spend a fun morning singing, reading, and creating projects with your child?
Do you want learn playful ways to help your child get ready to read?
Join us at the library for Fun With Letters, an early literacy workshop designed for parents and children ages 3-5.
Sound interesting? Call the Children's Desk to register: 503-718-2656.
Workshop will be held Saturday, May 18 10:30-11:30 a.m. in the Puett Room

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

Simon Says: Don't Use Flashcards!

Recent research has been indicating that play is how kids learn and is important for their future success. This short article from the New York Times by Tara Parker-Pope, provides more explicit guidance around what types of games and how you can alter games to increase a child’s ability to pay attention, remember rules, and exhibit self-control—all strong predictors of academic success!

Here are a few things from the article that you can try with your kids or even a group of kids, for that matter:
• Play games like Simon Says, Red Light/Green Light, and clapping and signing games which require kids to pay attention and focus, follow instructions/rules/the leader, and exhibit self-control.

• Change rules or add new components to games develops mental flexibility and requires increased concentration and memory skills—examples include having kids touch the opposite body part than what is being sung during Head and Shoulders (touch your nose when you sing the word ‘toes’), switching green to stop and red to go in Red Light/Green Light.

• Do more singing and clapping games! Make up a new verse to an old favorite action rhyme that kids have memorized and try singing in the round (Row, Row, Row your boat is a good one to start with).