Wash Your Hands!

The CDC and the Allen County Flu Task Force have some good suggestions for all of us. We should always remind children to:

• Cover their nose and mouth with a tissue when they cough or sneeze—have them throw the tissue away after they use it.
• Wash their hands often with soap and water, especially after they cough or sneeze. If water is not near, use an alcohol-based hand cleaner.
• Remind them to not to touch their eyes, nose, or mouth. Germs often spread this way!

Let's All Work Together to Stay Healthy!

Trains Storytime

Today's Smart Start Preschool Storytime at 10:30 a.m. is all about trains!
Three to six year olds (and their favorite grown-up) are invited join us for fun stories, songs and rhymes about trains.



Find train facts, history, and games at this kid friendly website-
Trakkies - for kids who love trains

A Child's Book Review: Clementine

Clementine by Sara Pennypacker was reviewed by Fiona, age 6:

We read the newer Clementine books before we read this one, but okay fine, we like them all. I love cats just like Clementine does.

Submit your child's book review to me via email and you may see it in a future "A Child's Book Review" blog post.

Healthy Food, Healthy Bodies

The Monster Health Book is a fun, kid-friendly guide for taking care of yourself -- with tips on healthy foods, exercise, and just feeling good about yourself! Mixed in with the information are fun facts, like the number of peanuts it takes to make one jar of peanut butter.
(Want to know the answer? Highlight the area below to read it!)


It takes about 550 peanuts to make one 12 ounce jar of peanut butter.


Playnormous is a website that promotes healthy eating and exercise! Play games like Lunch Crunch, where you have to put together a healthy meal, or Juice Jumble where you have to figure out which fruit drinks REALLY have fruit juice in them. Grown-ups will find tips and lesson plans, as well.

Early Learning Center Mailbox

There are so many things to look at and talk about in this picture. Drawing pictures with your preschooler is a great way to work on narrative skills. Narrative skills include the ability to describe things & events and to tell stories.

Make up a story about this drawing with your preschooler or create a drawing of your own to talk about.

To learn more about the six early literacy skills click here.

Cut Paper Illustrations "All in a Day"

Who could resist the sweet sounding text of Cynthia Rylant
paired with the mesmerizing paper-cut illustrations of Nikki
McClure?

“All in a Day” is the perfect way to welcome a new
day or wish it a dreamy goodnight.

Find more books with Cut Paper Illustrations here!

Healthy Kids Day !

Fun, Free and Healthy!

Visit "YMCA's Healthy Kids Day" on Saturday April 25th from 10:00a.m.-2:00p.m.

This free event will be held at Parkview Field in Harrison Square, home of the Fort Wayne Tin Caps! Stop by the Children's Services table to pick up a calendar of free activities at the downtown library. We'll also have some bookmarks for you to color, and other fun surprises.

Click here to download the flyer for this event!

Leading to Reading and Reading Planet

Here are two great websites offered by R.I.F. (Reading is Fundamental):

Leading to Reading is geared toward younger children who aren't yet reading, and their grown-ups, and has games, crafts, fingerplays, rhymes, book suggestions, and much more.

Reading Planet, for kids who are reading and writing on their own, offers a story maker, book reviews written by kids, project ideas, clip art for stories...the list goes on and on and on!

A Child's Book Review: A Carousel Tale, by Elisa Kleven

A Carousel Tale is reviewed by six-year-old Fiona:

My Mom, my sister and I loved this book. First of all, I liked how the book was named A Carousel Tale and it was actually a story about a carousel tail too. The pictures were colorful and helped us imagine the story better. I liked how Ernst made the bird out of the dog's tail. Nora liked the little blue alligator best of all.

Email YOUR book review to us, and you may see your thoughts about a book that you've read on a future ACPL Kids Blog post.

Clouds, Clouds, Clouds

Sometimes, we have to put up with April Showers.
Visit this website (http://aim.hamptonu.edu/outreach/5-7games.html) and use the time you’re stuck indoors to learn about clouds. Scroll to the middle of the page for a Cloud Matching Game – you can play online or you can print out a game to play at your kitchen (or library) table.

A Child's Book Review: The BFG by Roald Dahl

The BFG by Roald Dahl was reviewed by 4-year-old Helena:

"That was pretty fun. The giants won't eat us and they went away. That they went
away is a pretty good thing. Sophie and the BFG are my favorite
characters. The BFG talked pretty silly."

Submit your child's book review to me via email and you may see it in a future "A Child's Book Review" blog post.

Fort Wayne -- Tree City USA

Congratulations, Fort Wayne! The Department of Natural Resources has named our city a Tree City USA!

If you want to learn more about different types of trees, how they benefit our environment and our lives, and how they grow, you might want to read The Tree Book by Gina Ingoglia.

Hey! You might want to go sit under a tree and read!

Early Learning Center Mailbox

Can you find two capital "B"s and the two lower case "b"s in this drawing?

What a creative way to work on letter knowledge!

Letter knowledge is knowing that letters are different from each other, knowing the names and sounds of the letters and recognizing letters everywhere. This is an important early literacy skill. For more information about the six skills your child needs to know in order to learn to read click here.

Fort Wayne Children's Zoo

The Fort Wayne Children's Zoo will open again for the summer season
Saturday April 18th!

Stop in to Children's Services to check out some of our favorite zoo books like "Dear Zoo" by Rod Campbell



Some of our other favorite zoo books include:
Zoo by Bruno Munari
Color Zoo by Lois Ehlert
The Children's Zoo by Tana Hoban
If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss

A Day in Allen County

Calling photographers of all ages -- it's the 4th Annual Day in Allen County! Folks young and old are invited to take photos of something great that's happening somewhere in Allen County sometime during the day today. Then, submit your photo(s) to the Library by April 23, 2009: digital photos may be emailed, printed photos or media may be dropped off at any Allen County Public Library location.

Click here for the program rules.

We look forward to seeing all the wonderful happenings in Allen County!

Children's Services Newsletter!

Check it out!
Keep up to date with the handy Children's Services Newsletter!

Sign up to receive this bi-monthy e-info guide on our web-page or e-mail cchristian@acpl.info to be added to the e-mail list.


Click here to see the latest issue

A Child's Book Review: Zagazoo

Zagazoo by Quentin Blake was reviewed by 3-year-old Robert:

I like Zagazoo changing into different animals.

Submit your child's book review to me via email and you may see it in a future "A Child's Book Review" blog post.

It's National Library Week!

First sponsored in 1958, National Library Week is a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and libraries across the country each April. It is a time to celebrate the contributions of our nation's libraries and librarians and to promote library use and support.

We hope you will visit the Library this week and often throughout the year. Let us know what you like. Let us know what could be improved. Check out some books, DVDs, magazines or videogames. Join us at storytime or bring your preschooler to the Early Learning Center. Ask a reference question or ask for help finding a book.

It's your library! Enjoy it! Use it!
Let us know how to improve it!

Happy Easter

Today is Easter Day & the ACPL is closed. The Main Library will re-open tomorrow at 9am and branch libraries will re-open tomorrow at 10am.





There have been a lot of fun Easter books published this year, such as Bob Boyle's Wubbzy's Egg-cellent Easter which is a lift-the-flap book! Remember, the Library receives new books almost every day, you are sure to find something that you will enjoy on our new book shelves.

Happy Easter!

Read Together

Is your family hanging out together this weekend? Maybe you'll have time to share a book. The I LOVE YOU Book, by Todd Parr, talks about unconditional love -- the kind of love that happens in families, no matter what's going on -- dancing, taking a walk, happy times and sad.

There are lots of good books at the Allen County Public Library. We're closed on Sunday, April 12, but we're open regular hours today-- visit together!

Baby Brain Map

Zero to Three, a GREAT source of information on the development of infants and toddlers, has a new tool for learning about how early experiences enrich development. The Baby Brain Map allows parents and other adults to read brief snippets of what researchers have to say about how touch, hearing, movement, language, and other experiences affect the growth and learning of young children.

Here in Children's Services, we LOVE infants and toddlers! No one's too young to visit the Library! Why not bring your youngster in soon? You can spend time in our Early Learning Center, watch the fish swim around in their aquariums, check out some board books to take home and read together, or attend our Baby and Toddler Storytimes...see you soon!

Art Out of the Box: Ceramics

Friday, April 10th
2:00 p.m.

Join us for "Art Out of the Box" focusing on the art of ceramics!

Explore the traveling art gallery and interact with the art works as you learn about history, artist, and art techniques!


Homeschoolers in grades 2-6

Letter Play Day!! Letter A

Start off Letter "A" Play Day by attending our Smart Start Storytime all about the letter "A" at 10:30 am today!

After storytime, spend some time exploring the letter "A" in the Early leaning Center. Activity stations designed for parent and child interaction will be available for use throughout the day, until the Early Learning Center closes at 8:00pm

Trash to Treasure Art Contest

Here's a fun activity to motivate you to recycle... The Trash to Treasure Art Contest!

Use your imagination to create a piece of art made ENTIRELY out of discarded material. Your art piece must fit on a 3 foot table, and one person must be able to lift it, so don't make it TOO big.

The contest is open to all ages -- from preschool through adult -- and will take place at Science Central on April 18th.

Sound like fun? Click here for more details.

If you want to read more about Recycling and Environmental Issues, check out this booklist of materials available at our Library.

Mock Coretta Scott King Award

This year the Coretta Scott King Books Awards are celebrating their 40th anniversary. These awards are given annually by the American Library Association to recognize outstanding African American authors and illustrators of books for children.

Sound interesting?

Wanna know more about some of these books?

Check out the ACPL Mock Coretta Scott King Award discussion blog at http://acplmockcsk.blogspot.com/

You are invited to join the discussion as we explore books which might be considered for this year's award.

April is National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month!
Let's all take the time
To read some children's poetry,
Or write a silly rhyme!

Celebrate National Poetry Month by checking out some children's poetry, like...


Be Glad Your Nose Is on Your Face and Other Poems,
by Jack Prelutsky








...or, you might want to check out poets.org, where you can find many resources for National Poetry Month, such as poetry contests, daily emailed poems, information on the Poetry Read-a-thon and much more.



For even more poetic fun, try these sites:

GottaBook's 30 Poets in 30 Days Project, where a new, previously unpublished poem will be posted daily during April -- there is an amazing list of children's poets associated with this project!

The Miss Rumphius Effect will be interviewing a different children's poet every day during April -- many of the same poets will be featured here as in the 30 Poets in 30 Days Project.

We also have a list of poetry resources on the Children's Services website!

Indiana Children's Authors and Illustrators

The Indiana State Library has published an interactive tool for finding and sharing information about children's authors and illustrators local to Indiana:

Indiana Children's Authors & Illustrators Wiki

It's indexed by name, location, genre, and publication date. If you're trying to find Indiana authors and/or illustrators, this is a GREAT place to start!

A Child's Book Review: Dinothesaurus

Dinothesaurus: Prehistoric Poems and Paintings by Douglas Florian was reviewed by 4-year-old Helena:

I really like it. I like the dinosaurs and I like that its really long. They're all dinosaurs that I know. I like the pictures of all the dinosaurs.

Submit your child's book review to me via email and you may see it in a future "A Child's Book Review" blog post.

Welcome Baby Carlo!

Heather, our department's Assistant Manager, has welcomed a beautiful new baby into her family! Yesterday at 8:11 am, Carlo Manuel was born. He weighed in at 8lbs 9.5 oz. and 21 inches long. He is healthy and loved and excitedly welcomed by mom, dad, and big sisters Helena and Ada.

Congratulations to the whole family!

If you want to read about welcoming a new baby at your house, here's a booklist to get you started.

Wacky Wednesday!

In celebration of April Fool's Day, Children's Services will provide a scavenger hunt for you to complete! Can you find all of the wild and wacky changes that we have made? Stop in today to show us that you can't be fooled!