July 29, 2010

Summer Reading Finale Luau is a Hawaiian Sensation!

Filed under: Elementary students, Preschoolers, Reading, Teens, Tweens — Youth Blog @ 10:27 am

Children and parents enjoyed a tropical Hawaiian luau as they celebrated two months of summer reading.  Kids scrambled to finish as much reading as they could to earn entries into the grand prize drawing.  Delighted by the array of fun toys and trinkets on the prize cart,  kids were able to choose 3 prizes and 1 book for 20 hours of reading.  Younger children earned drawing entries for each 5 books read, and teens earned 1 entry for each hour read.

There were 14,055 books read by kids and 4,421 hours read by teens, with 1,052 youth participating!

The finale luau featured crafts such as paddleball coloring, fan design and lei making with the Chelsea Center for the Arts.  Kids jumped and splashed with toe fishing, giant beachball volleyball, and the fire truck bounce.  Everyone enjoyed crooning a tune with karaoke, and danced away to the Hukilau hula and limbo.  Face painting was a hit, along with refreshing snow cones.  Winners of the grand prize drawing were announced before the fun Pollution Solution magic show.

A special thank you to all of our teen volunteers!! Without you the event would not have been possible!!

Thank you also to the Friends of the Chelsea District Library for their support of Summer Reading!

Friends_Web

Another BIG THANK YOU goes to those who contributed to our Summer Reading prizes, including:

Aberdeen Bike & Outdoors, Arctic Coliseum, Cleary’s Pub, Just Imagine Toy and Bookstore, and the Masonic Lodge of Chelsea. Your generosity helped encourage the youth of Chelsea to read, read, read!

Did you read this year?  Congratulations to those who read and won prizes!

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Keep reading for your own summer fun!!

July 16, 2010

“I’m on a Cart!”

Filed under: Elementary students, Funny, Teens, Tweens, Videos — Youth Blog @ 9:08 am

July 15, 2010

Read 10 Books and See Your Favorite Team!

Filed under: Elementary students, Preschoolers, Reading, Sports, Teens, Tweens — Youth Blog @ 10:11 am

 

michigan_reads_pistonsHow would you like to attend a Detroit Pistons game, just for reading?

  • Read 10 books this summer, register on the Michigan Reads website, and you’ll get a FREE ticket to a Pistons game, plus an invitation to attend a FREE Party at the Palace, which includes locker room tours, photos with the NBA Championship trophies, and an on-court basketball clinic!

Not a basketball fan? No matter! After reading your 10 books and registering on the Michigan Reads website, you could choose a FREE ticket to a Tigers game OR a FREE pass to the 2010 Red Wings HockeyFest event! All just for reading! Flyers explaining this program are available at the first floor information desk in the youth department. Sign up today!

July 7, 2010

Water Fun for Everyone!

Filed under: Elementary students, Preschoolers, Tweens — Youth Blog @ 6:35 pm

On Wednesday, June 30th, Chelsea youth were entertained by water fun at the program Waterworks, part of the Summer Reading Program’s theme “Make a Splash, Read!  The kids learned water fun facts, experimented with different types of bubble blowing, and learned about the water cycle in Chelsea from Ray Schmidt and his staff in the Chelsea Water/Wastewater departments.  Check out the fun below!

 

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July 4, 2010

Celebrate independence with a Patriotic Robot!

Filed under: Elementary students, Holidays, Preschoolers, Tweens — Youth Blog @ 11:58 am

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Nothing says “Happy 4th of July,” like a Patriotic Robot!

Check out this website for this and more 4th of July crafts and games.

Go to michiganfireworks.com to find out where the nearest fireworks display is.  Have fun!

June 29, 2010

Wild Wednesday Magic Show!

Filed under: Elementary students, Funny, Preschoolers, Tweens — Youth Blog @ 12:10 pm

 

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Thank you to the Friends of the Chelsea District Library for their support of Summer Reading!

Friends_Web

June 24, 2010

Fun, Fantastic Facts about Fish!

Filed under: Animals, Elementary students, Preschoolers, Reading, Sports, Tweens — Youth Blog @ 11:19 am

Do you like to swim and splash in the water?  Fish do, too!   And lots of other sea creatures!   And they do it in fun and crazy ways!

This year the theme for our Summer Reading Program is Make a Splash:  Read!  and we are having all sorts of great programs about water.  Check out some fun facts here or come to one of our exciting programs!

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The frogfish looks like a lump of coral growing on the reef.  He blends in so he can be safe.  He perches on the coral with his fins, which kind of look like arms and legs.

 

 

 

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The social feather duster looks like flowers, but they’re not!  They are a colony of worms that live in tubes they build in the sand or rock, and they wave feathers at the end of their bodies to catch tiny creatures in the water to eat.  If you swim by them they will close down tight in their tubes. 

 

 

 

fish11Did you know that fish need clean teeth just like you?  Tiny creatures, like shrimp and gobi fish, brush their teeth for them.  Big fish swim up to a place known as a “cleaning station” and little creatures swim in their mouths and eat the pieces of fish stuck in their teeth!  If a fish didn’t have clean teeth the teeth would fall out and the fish would die!   This is known as a symbiotic relationship, where both fish help each other.   Miss Lisa, one of our librarians and a scuba diver, once ate doritos and went under water and let shrimp climb in her mouth and clean her teeth!

 

 

fish8A flounder has two eyes on one side of its head!  It starts out like a regular fish, but it likes to lay flat in the sand to hide, so when it is a baby it decides to slide one eye over to the other side.  It takes a few days for the eye to slide over.  Can you do that?

 

 

fish parrotThe parrotfish protects itself when it sleeps by blowing a huge spit bubble and swiming inside it.  When a predator comes close to him it breaks the bubble, giving the parrotfish time to swim away!

 

 

 

fish12The anglerfish lives deep, deep in the bottom of the ocean, several miles down where it is completely dark.  It has a glowing tip on a piece of skin that sticks out in front of his mouth.  Smaller fish can’t see the big fish, and think the glowy thing is a small jellyfish or fish, and swim up to eat it, and the anglerfish snap! eats the little fish. 

 

OTHER FUN FACTS

  • Octopuses have three hearts.
  • Starfish have eight eyes, one at the end of each leg.
  • You can tell the age of a fish by looking at its scales.  They have growth rings like trees, called circuli.  Clusters of them are called annuli.  Each annuli show one year.
  • The world’s largest mammal, the blue whale, weighs 50 tons at birth. Fully grown, it weighs as much as 150 tons.  It is 96 feet long.  It is as big as four large dinosaurs (Brontosauri), 23 elephants, 230 cows or 1800 men.  
  • The 14-foot-long narwhal is a whale whose tooth sticks out of his head and can reach up to eight feet long.
  • Fish swam in the seas long before the dinosaurs roamed the earth.
  • Fish have a specialized sense organ called the lateral line which works much like radar and helps them navigate in dark or murky water. 
  • A lungfish can enter a state of suspended animation out of the water for three years. You could put it in the garage for 2 years, and it would survive.

Did you know you can learn to scuba dive when you are ten years old?  Learn about it at the PADI website.  And if you would like to learn more about fish or the coral reef, look at books in the nonfiction section in the 591s or 577.70s, or ask a youth librarian for help.

June 19, 2010

Sarah at Sea Cast Announced

Filed under: Elementary students, Teens, Tweens — Youth Blog @ 10:33 am

Pick up your scripts at the Youth Information Desk and start memorizing!

Mark your calendars–the play performance is 1:00pm, July 17 at the Washington Street Education Center.  For more information about Drama Week @ the Library, click here.

SARAH AT SEA

MARGARET BRIGHTON/LAURA ALLEN:  Elizabeth Higgins

SARAH BRIGHTON, daughter:  Kalina Koch

MRS. EMILY CLARKE/Pirate:  Audrey Timberlake

MARY CLARKE, her daughter:  Emily Waters

VINCENT BRIGHTON, uncle/Pirate:  Tom Ridley

CAPTAIN HAMILTON:  Matthew Weisberg

NED, his son, First Mate:  Mitchell Henschel

PASSENGERS

JOHN RUSSELL, wealthy merchant: Luke DeGraff

SOPHIE RUSSELL, his wife:  Alyssa Allen

 CHARLOTTE RUSSELL:  Morgan Powell

CATHERINE RUSSELL:  Alexa Moore

CHRISTINA RUSSELL:   Caroline Pierce

TOLLIVER GLADWIN, banker:  Dominic Trobaugh

 VICTORIA GLADWIN, his wife: Rosie Knafl

NIGEL GLADWIN Tyler Severson

CHARITY GLADWIN:  Kiki Mitchell

GENEVIEVE GLADWIN:   Jessica Ligi

ESTHER STANCLIFFE:  Jessi Olmstead

NELLIE STANCLIFFE:  Carol Ann (Annie) Nichols

 

SAILORS

CEDRIC, Sailing Master:  Kyle Zimmerman

ISSAC, Quartermaster:  Suhjin King

DUNCAN, Carpenter:  Noah Blough

KEEGAN, Master Gunner:  Anna Weisberg)

AVERY, Powder Monkey:  Mikayla Koch

CASEY, Swabee:  Kaylee Griffith

PIRATES

JAMIE, Quartermaster Elena Brown

JIMMY. First mate:  Bryan Allen

DUTCH:   Kincade Vargas

CAPTAIN WILD EYE WAYNEWRIGHT: Trever McTaggart

TWO-TOOTH TILDA:  Morgan Fischer

SIX-FINGER SAM:  David Henschel

GUNPOWDER GUS:  Noah DeGraff

MUDPIE MOLLY:  Thea Higgins

BULLFROG BERT:  Landon Rauch

HORRIBLE HETTY:  Jessica Emmert

ALICE THE AWFULL:  Kate Vanderspool

VILE VICKY:  Elise Blakeman

ICKY IVY:  Sophia Sjogren

BRENDA THE BANDIT:  Anna Scaling

TERRIBLE TILLIE:  Kirsten Sjogren

LUCKY LIZZIE:  Ella Ashe

LENNY THE LIZARD:  Tom Ridley

CRAZY SAL:  Audrey Timberlake

Thank you to the Friends of the Chelsea District Library for their support of Summer Reading!

Friends_Web

 

June 18, 2010

Summer Reading Kickoff

Filed under: Elementary students — Youth Blog @ 3:59 pm

Summer Reading Kickoff on Friday June 11th was record-breaking!  That day,  over 450 kids and teens signed up for summer reading.

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The night before Kickoff, librarians Karen, Lisa and Edith set up a craft station at the Finale Festival behind Pierce Lake Elementary.

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Here’s one happy festival-goer with her brand new Soctopus!

Take a look at some of the activities kids participated in during kickoff.

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Chelsea Center for the Arts had a marble paper station, where the library’s Youth Service Group teens helped kids make art!

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Toe Fishing is now a perennial favorite.  It was so popular last year, we brought it back again!

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Another popular event was the Karaoke station with Miss Lisa!

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Nature Discovery’s Jim McGrath brought amphibians and reptiles to the library for all the kids to see…

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and TOUCH!

June 17, 2010

Ron, the Bubble Man is here today!

Filed under: Elementary students — Youth Blog @ 12:08 pm

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Thank you to the Friends of the Chelsea District Library for their support of Summer Reading!

Friends_Web

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