Sunny Days at the Library Beach

The sun was shining, it was our last week of our Spring program lineup, and it was a great week for a library beach party!

On Thursday, our preschoolers sat on beach towels while we read books by two of my favorite children's authors:  Melanie Watt and Laura Numeroff.  All of Melanie Watt's Scaredy Squirrel books make me smile with their cute and amusing illustrations.  They feature a sweet worrywort squirrel who would prefer to stay safely at home in his nut tree and avoid the unpredictable dangers of "the Unknown."  In Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach, Scaredy hopes to steer clear of falling coconuts, packs of pirates, flocks of seagulls, and other perils by manufacturing a beach in his own in his backyard, but ends up having to visit the real shore to get a seashell with authentic ocean sounds.  When Scaredy's extensive preparations hit a snag, he finds himself in a crowd on the beach--enjoying the very situation that he had always avoided.

Most of the kids were already familiar with Laura Numeroff's If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and were prepared for the same pattern to follow in If You Give a Cat a Cupcake.  This one fit our beach theme really well--I especially appreciate the way Numeroff draws the connection between sand at the beach and sprinkles on cupcakes, and I think the preschoolers did too!

The book How Will We Get to the Beach? by Brigitte Luciani allowed the preschoolers to try out their own problem-solving skills.  In this story, Roxanne heads for the beach on a sunny day with five essentials: her baby, her turtle, an umbrella, a book, and a ball.  Roxanne's car breaks down and she must find an alternate mode of transportation that can get everything there; however, the bus, bike, skateboard, kayak, and hot air balloon all force Roxanne to leave something behind.  Readers get to enjoy the guessing game of figuring out what's missing from each picture and what the ultimate solution to Roxanne's transportation problem could be.

We wrapped up the beach party with dancing in bubbles to Laurie Berkner's "The Goldfish" and did a sandpaper sandcastle craft.  It was a great way to end our Spring storytime schedule and transition into Summer Reading!