On the 22nd of March in the town of Bucyrus, a program celebrating the release of the new movie "Horton Hears a Who" was held at the Bucyrus Public Library. Due to our ongoing construction, this program was done as a drop-in, where participants could come and go as they pleased. This could also be done as a regular program, as all of the components are there. We just simply don't have a meeting area large enough, since half of our community room is being used for storage and our annex books quickly for meetings for the community.
I prepared a Powerpoint presentation detailing the story of the book as well as some biographical information on Dr. Seuss. This powerpoint could be used to open a regular program, as well as sharing the book.
Participants could move to 5 different craft stations to make Horton/elephant-themed crafts. All of the crafts we did are pictured above, so you can get an idea of how they looked. These crafts were:
EVERYONE'S AN ELEPHANT!--At this station, participants could make ears and look just like Horton! I took the ear pattern that I had found online and enlarged them. These ears were colored, cut out, and then affixed to two strips of construction paper that were fitted to the child's head.
HEART ELEPHANT PAPER CRAFT--This cute elephant craft was made up entirely of hearts. Pieces were first colored, then cut out, and then assembled according to instructions. There was also an example for participants to follow.
ELEPHANT TOILET PAPER ROLL CRAFT--The base of this craft is a toilet paper roll! The pattern for the elephant's body was copied onto construction paper. They were first colored and then cut out. Then, they were affixed to a toilet paper roll. We had to agree that the completed craft certainly looked a lot like Horton himself!
HORTON THE ELEPHANT COLORING PAGE--This station simply had a coloring page taken from online that featured Horton and the small clover on which the Who live. Participants colored the page. You could choose to display the page at your library and have extras for your patrons to take with them.
I DID SOMETHING GOOD TODAY CERTIFICATE--These certificates were taken from online (www.seussville.com/horton)and printed on our color printer. Participants could take the certificates and when mom or dad caught them being good (not arguing with a brother or sister, helping around the house, etc.) they could award them.
The Seussville site mentioned above was also used to print out word searches, mazes, etc. for participants to take with them.
While participants worked on the crafts, songs from the CD "Songs of Dr. Seuss and More" played on a portable player.
Snacks were also served as part of the program. These included pretzels, fruit snacks, brownies, and juice boxes. Using mostly prepackaged snacks and drinks for these drop-in programs has been a great help. I usually make a large bowl of punch and someone has to man the table. Having the prepackaged drinks saves a lot of mess!
Participants for this program ranged in age from preschoolers to older elementary.
