Saturday Story Time: Robots

Saturday Story Times tend to have a slightly more complicated craft because they include children up to second grade.  For my first Saturday Story Time I went with a robot theme.  Originally I had intended to have the kids make their own robots out of paper towel tubes, paint and tin foil down in our large meeting room.  However, due to Super Storm Sandy FEMA camped out in our meeting room since November 1st and was still there at the beginning of January so I moved my program upstairs to our picture book area.  I was a little uncomfortable painting in our picture book area so I decided to work up something new.

I decided to make robot costumes.  I had my coworkers and parents bring in their brown bags from the grocery store.  I cut a slit up the back, arm holes a head hole and then very carefully turned the bags inside out so that all the logos were on the inside.  I gave the kids tinfoil, crayons, foam shapes, sequins, jewels and feathers.  They all created amazing costumes.  (Note that this is the costume I made and it is my very skinny adult sister modeling it, the costumes will fit the kids better.)

For the story time portion I had only three books planned since I wanted to give the kids plenty of time to decorate their costumes.

Boy + Bot by Amy Dyckman

Robot Zombie Frankenstein! by Annette Simon

Hello Robots by Bob Staake

I had two squirmy boys show up on time for my story time. After reading Boy + Bot I felt like they were just not feeling stories. I asked them if they wanted to try a robot song to get the wiggles out or if they wanted to start working on their costumes. The boys really wanted to get started on costumes. When my late arrivals showed up 10 minutes later, they were disappointed to have missed the stories so I did send them home with some of my robot books. As much as I was sorry to skip some of the stories a lot of the kids did spend more than 45 minutes on their costumes. Everyone's costumes came out colorful and fun.