Story Town Fun

Playing a little bit of catch-up today...I wanted to make a short post about a fun activity the kids and I attended earlier this month.

We are frequent visitors of the Pima County Public Library, and that includes the preschool Storytime activities. We love Ms. Michelle, the Green Valley branch's children's librarian. She has been in charge of Storytime ever since we moved to Sahuarita. She is energetic, loving, creative, and fun...and she makes Storytime a wonderful place to take my kids as often as possible!

For a while now, Ms. Michelle has encouraged our family to visit Story Land, a yearly activity the library holds at its main branch in downtown Tucson. We have always shrugged it off before, but this year (thanks to Ms. Michelle's reminder and the recommendation of another friend), I thought, "Why not?" So, on November 3rd (the first Saturday of the month), the girls and I drove to Tucson to have a look.

We were all really glad we did! Story Town is a kid-sized festival celebrating books and reading...perfect for a family of bookworms. There was live music and dancing, many activity booths, picture stations, and even food vendors along the perimeter of the event. Our first stop was at the used-book tent, where each of the girls picked up a book for about $0.50 each!

After that Lorelai headed to the cake walk game (or "book walk," to be more precise). All the girls took turns walking in the circle as the music played. However, after a few minutes, the number Lorelai stopped on was called, and she won another book to take home! We were all very excited to get so many great new books!

Perhaps the girls' favorite activity center was the "fairy tale castle" (big surprise, I know). There were "princesses" seated inside (probably volunteers from a nearby high school, but why ruin the illusion?), and they took turns reading fantastical tales to the girls.

Celeste and Aurora would have listened to "Rapunzel" tell stories all afternoon, so long as they could have stayed under this romantic "fairy canopy!"

Lorelai preferred to take a book from the "fairy tale" pile and start reading it over herself...she gave it back eventually, though.

At another station, the girls were able to make animal stick puppets. They got to color the animal pictures first before cutting them out. While they were hard at work, they got a visit from a favorite book character...Clifford, the big red dog:

The girls were a little wary of Clifford, but soon warmed to him when they realized he was friendly. They saw several other characters wandering throughout Story Time, including Curious George.

Another cool craft booth (which I unfortunately didn't photograph) featured projects made with old stamps. There were a few chests there filled with literally thousands of old stamps, some decades old, and many from other countries! Lorelai made a fill-in-the-blank story, using pictures on the stamps as the missing words in her story. We all made bookmarks plastered with old stamps (I found two from Mongolia, and a 5-kopek stamp from the 60s era Soviet Union! Score! Yes, I became a major stamp nerd while at this table). At the end, the girls all got to address a postcard to themselves from Story Town. They received it in the mail a couple of weeks later, and they were quite excited!

After all the creating, the girls were hungry, so we each got a hot dog from a nearby stand and enjoyed an outdoor lunch in the park:

They also had to goof off on this large modern art sculpture that sits at one end of the main library's outdoor plaza:

Overall, we had a great time, even though we weren't able to stay too long (Nathan and I had painting to do that night). I think we will definitely mark Story Town on our calendar for next year. It is great to have kids that are still young, and who don't think they are "too cool" for this kind of sweet, fun activity. I love to see them get excited about books, reading, and learning. I hope this kind of activity will still appeal to them for a few more years.