Tag Archives: activity

That’s a Big Bunny

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It’s a simple DIY projector that creates an enormous shadow friend! All you need is a sheet of paper, an oatmeal container, and a cell phone flashlight. And have we got the PERFECT storytime book for it!

We recommend reading The Black Rabbit by Philippa Leathers (Candlewick, 2006, read here by Storytime with Miss Abi). When Rabbit is stalked by an enormous Black Rabbit, he tries everything to escape his foe. He loses him in the deep dark woods, but unfortunately encounters a hungry wolf! Rabbit gets chased and just when things look bleak (and with juuuuust the right amount of sunlight), the Black Rabbit appears and saves the day!

You’ll need:

  • 1 large oatmeal container
  • 1 piece of black construction paper
  • Scissors or a utility knife
  • Hot glue or tape

First, cut a circle of black construction paper that fits over the open end of a large oatmeal container. Then use scissors or a utlilty knife to cut a design into the circle. Attach to the oatmeal container using hot glue or tape.

On the other end of the oatmeal container, cut a pinhole that’s just a tad larger then your cell phone light.

Find a darkened room, activate the flashlight on your cell phone, and place the light against the pinhole of the container. Point the image towards the wall and watch the magic happen! Move closer to the wall for a smaller projected image, and further away for a super large projected image.

FYI: we discoverd that a cell phone flashlight definitely works best. We tried a regular flashlight and found it produced a blurrier, less definied image, as seen below.

Make one shadow projector, or create several and put on a fabulous show!

C is for Cotsen

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C is for Canoe 4

From African A.B.C. by Norah Senior. Pan-African Books. ; West African Publishing Co., 1959. Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University Library.

It’s time for the annual #ColorOurCollections, hosted by the New York Academy of Medicine! Each year libraries, archives, and cultural institutions around the world share free coloring sheets based on their collections. You might recall the Coloring Feathers post we did in 2021…but this year, we went alphabetical with “C is for Cotsen,” celebrating some of the cool alphabet books we have in our special collections vaults!

Our coloring pages consist of seven images spanning 1805-1959, including this hilarious one from 1840, “C is for Collision.” It was so completely random for an alphabet book, Katie and I had a good laugh over it

C is for Collision 2

R. Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet by Robert Cruikshank. Darton and Clark (Holborn Hill), c1840. Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University Library.

You can see our complete coloring pages here. In addition to the coloring activity, we thought it would be fun to revisit some of our fun alphabet posts. Here there are, in no particular order, starting with some tabletop topiary letters:

so very verdant

A story time where we rounded up some letters on the ranch!

hey uA popular DIY keychain project we designed for a community event table:

red letter day Our review of some awesome spelling straws:

sip n spellWe discover the cutest alphabet tactile toys, ever:

alphabet playtime

A gorgeous letter art activity for teens and tweens:

We test out some amazing vanishing paper for some free floating fun:

laserjet-testAnnnnnnd there was that time we filled our library with 130 giant inflatable alphabet letters:

balloons in entry 3

So Fortunate

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The time was summer. The place was Wisconsin. Katie was shopping at an antique mall when she discovered The Good Fortune Cookie (Chronicle Books, 2015) inside a dealer nook. After flipping through a few pages and laughing at the unique format, she knew the book belonged at our library. As an added bonus, it included recipes to make your own fortune cookies, so to the literary testing kitchen we go! Take it away Katie!

The book itself is simple and adorable. The spiral-bound pages divide into three sections, which you can flip to create hundreds of fortunes (very similar to the Shakespearean insult book Dr. Dana reviewed here). What’s especially cute is that each section is backed with brightly colored paper, as you can see above. But the most intriguing part for me were the recipes in the back of the book. I’ve never made fortune cookies!

A quick glance let me know that I had most of the ingredients on hand. But there was something listed I have never encountered before: superfine sugar. I stopped by three different grocery stores and none of them carried it. Turns out superfine sugar (also called caster or quick-dissolve) is required when the sugar needs to melt and mix faster into batters or creams. It’s not recommended to substitute regular granulated sugar. Thank goodness we had a small food processor in the back of our pantry…I was able to grind the granulated sugar to superfine.

sugar 3

The recipe instructions are very concise, and it didn’t take long before I was ready to  bake the cookies. I carefully scooped four blobs of batter onto a greased baking sheet, spread it out roughly four inches. Checking in on their progress, I was surprised to see the four squares of batter had expanded and had come very close to combining into one enormous cookie!

I separated the dough as best I could and added an extra few minutes of baking time for the edges to turn brown. The recipe specifically states to keep a close eye on your cookies because overcooking can happen very quickly, which I can confirm happens in a split second if you aren’t paying attention.

Once I felt the batter was baked, I tried to fold my first fortune cookie. The dough was hot! Very hot! Somehow I missed the author’s wise suggestion to invest in a pair of candy gloves, which would have protected my fingers from getting burned. Not deterred, I followed the folding instructions with nimble fingers while singing a rendition of “Hot Hot Hot” by Buster Poindexter. The fortune cookies looked great, but they were HUGE!

Lesson learned. Make smaller spreads of the batter and be speedy when folding.

The book’s estimate of about 20 cookies per batch was spot-on as I went through the baking and folding steps an additional four times. With each attempt, the size of the cookie got smaller and I was faster folding the hot dough. The final two rounds of baking, I was confident enough to add the paper fortunes created from the book, and folded the cookies around them.

By the end, I was pleased my fortune cookies were almost the same size as a cookie you would receive from a restaurant. Moving from left to right in the image below, you can see the timeline of my cookie progress. On the far lower right is a restaurant fortune cookie for size comparison.

After sampling one (okay, three) cookies throughout the baking process, I can attest that they are really delicious. In the future, I think I’ll replace the almond extract with vanilla, or add some lemon or orange zest to enhance their flavor. There’s also a recipe for chocolate fortune cookies which basically reduces the amount of flour and adds cocoa powder.

Note: as far as making the paper fortunes for the cookies, I found instructions for an online template in the book, but the link no longer works. However, the book does tell you the correct size of the fortunes so you can easily do it on your own.

The Good Fortune Cookie – both the book and the recipe – receive my seal of approval!