Build a Band
We were looking for another passive program to have at our library for <a href=”http://wp.me/p2N1aX-ks” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Jamuary</a>, when we came across <a href=”http://lisaslibraryland.blogspot.com/2013/12/roll-gingerbread-man.html” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>this</a> on <em>Pinterest</em>. <em>Pinterest </em>is sort of the best, amiright? Anywho, I could envision us doing a music version of this and mentioned it to Brittany who I’d put in charge of figuring out the passive portion of our month. After all, any time she works on the passive events we seem to get excellent participation.
The next day she presented to me <em>Build a Band.</em> She had found free clip art and put a cool sheet together, but had trouble making the numbers look good with the instruments. I offered to step in, and she was totally cool with it. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my team? It’s a lot.
Well, after futzing with it a bit in <em>Photoshop</em> I finally realized what was bothering me: the images all seemed very “clip-arted” in and not unified like you’d like a band to be. What I ended up doing was printing off what we had so far, and then tracing the instruments that I wanted with a blue pencil. After that, I used a Sharpie to ink the coloring sheet. Once I’d printed off a copy (goodbye blue pencil marks), I scanned in the sheet and made my tweaks on it.
And here it is! As with pretty much everything on my blog, feel free to copy/adjust/reuse it:
<a href=”http://hafuboti.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/buildaband.jpg” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”><img class=”alignnone wp-image-1307″ title=”Click on this for a pdf. Also, feel free to take off my library’s logo at the bottom (usually I remember and save a non-logo copy for Hafuboti, but I forgot this time).” src=”http://hafuboti.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/buildaband1.jpg?w=584″ alt=”” width=”584″ height=”763″></a>
I also made a sign that mimicked Brittany’s <a href=”http://wp.me/p2N1aX-kZ” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”><em>Rock and Read Hall of Fame Inductees</em></a> sign. It summed up how to play (basically using our inspiration word-for-word since I tend to overcomplicate things by over explaining – heh).
<img class=”alignnone wp-image-1308″ title=”Our fun instruction sign – the same instructions are posted on the back side.” src=”http://hafuboti.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/build-sign.jpg?w=584″ alt=”A red, black, and white two-sided sign (since it’s placed on a table) giving instructions to the children on how to play the game – there’s some room for their own creative interpretation on how to play.” width=”584″ height=”490″>
We also used another <a href=”http://www.pinterest.com/pin/537758011727696094/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”><em>Pinterest </em>idea </a>and put our dice into those plastic toy vending machine containers – love it! It’s a bit noisy in our tiny space, but it beats losing the dice or fearing that an unsupervised child would try to swallow one.
<img class=”alignnone wp-image-1340″ title=”The only bummer with this is that the covers are pretty cloudy.” src=”http://hafuboti.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/dice-shakers.jpg?w=584″ alt=”Using toy containers for vending machine toys to hold dice so that children will have to work hard to lose them, and also to choke on them.” width=”584″ height=”438″>
It started off somewhat popular, but halfway into the month, I’d call it a bit of a flop. I don’t know if it’s because there’s a lot of rules to it, or if people don’t expect this sort of thing at our library. I’ll definitely return to this post and update it by the end of the month.
