Funky fit fun!

Funky Fit Kids Yoga was a fun school holiday event at the Tea Tree Gully Library.
In the Community Learning Centre a group of excited children (and some excited parents) discovered the fun of jungle dancing, yoga poses, songs and games.
Children came on a journey through the jungle complete with lions, tall trees and lotus blossoms.

Yoga fun in the school holidays

 

Featuring many fun yoga poses and stories, the workshop was a celebration of strength, flexibility and self-confidence.

School Holiday Art!

These school holidays were brimming with budding young artists! With the aid of a wonderful professional, Hannah, as well as our resident Picasso, Megan, we ran two Manga Art Drawing classes where participants learnt invaluable techniques in drawing the unique Japanese style cartoon. The results were inspiring! Children and youth ranging from 6 years to 16 years proudly displayed their completed works. We will be keeping an eye out for the next Tite Kubo to emerge from Tea Tree Gully!

The Summer Reading Club ‘The Amazing Read’ Finale

Fifty-five children participated in the Summer Reading Club, reading at least ten books each. Some have read significantly more than that, with a combined total of over 1000 books read so far.

 

One girl has even created her own charity fundraiser reading project after being inspired by the program.

Forty-one attended the finale with their parents, with activities including making marshmallow snowmen, alfoil sculptures, races with cotton wool stuck to their noses with Vaseline, badgemaking, face painting and Splash Theatre’s Mr Badger telling stories from Wind in the Willows.

We gave out lots of prizes for best book review, best costume and raffle draws. Staff enjoyed dressing up as much as the children but the winner was our Little Emperor.

It was a great night, which the children and parents really enjoyed and appreciated.

Chinese New Year Fun

January 23rd will mark the start of the Year of the Dragon and here at the library we’re getting pretty excited about it. To get into the Chinese New Year spirit we’ve hung lots of lanterns and there might even be some dragons around over the next couple of weeks.

If you’re after some school holiday fun, why not come and help us celebrate the New Year with the Chinese New Year Storytime on Monday 16, Tuesday 17, and Friday 20 January from 10:15am to 11:00am. Join our Library family in a session of enchanting stories, songs, activities and rhymes. Create your own Chinese Lantern to take home.

Start the year with a roar and let your imagination run free! Join in the Design-a-Dragon Workshop and create your own colourful dragon to take home. The workshop is on Wednesday 11 January from 10:30am to 11:30am. Bookings essential. For booking details check out the School Holiday brochure.

For the adults, qualified Tai Chi instructor Brenda Hum will be providing two free Tai Chi sessions, one on Monday 23rd at 11.00am and again on Tuesday 24th at 11.00am. Bookings are essential for these as well.

 

Amazing reads and terrific trails

We’re having a short break from our School Holiday programs at the moment, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still have fun at the Library!

If you like books, you’ll love the Summer Reading Club. The theme this year is The Amazing Read and all you have to do is read ten books, grab a reading log or book review sheet next time you’re in the Library and tell us about what you’re reading. You can enter as many times as you like for more chances to win great prizes.

Need a break from reading? Try our School Holiday Trails. Find the fake books, fill in the answers and receive a prize at the Information Desk once you’re finished.

For more information about any of these activities see our School Holiday Program.

School Holidays are fast approaching…

…which means that it is time for the School Holiday brochure and all the wonderful activities and events that it contains.

You can collect a copy of the brochure here at the Library or from the Golden Grove Arts Centre and the Turramura Rec Centre or from HIVE 12-twentyfive.

You can also access an online copy on our website or on your smart-phone by scanning this QR-code:

Get ahead of the rush - book your places in the events soon!

There’s so much on offer for children and youth in the City of Tea Tree Gully these holidays – we hope to see you there!

Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover

“Don’t judge a book by its cover workshop” was a great success with budding young artists turning old books into works of art. 

Imagination was the limit!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Collage added some colour to old pages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Books were redesigned with creative flair.

Internet and pizza – the perfect holiday combination!

Are you 13 to 16 years of age?
Need a break from your parents these holidays?
Looking for something to do on Thursday night?
Want two hours where you can Facebook, Minecraft, Twitter, Google+, and surf the Web while munching on pizza, listening to music, and drinking soft drinks?
Do we have a deal for you!
These school holidays, after the Library closes on a Thursday night, we’re running Internet Lock-ins for 13-16 year olds from 7pm-9pm.
NO CHARGE – all you need is your Library membership card.
Bookings essential: 8397 7333
Tell your friends.

Playing with Paper?

To be honest, until we were looking for ideas for the Dec/Jan holiday programme, I’d never heard of 3D Papercraft. And then another member of the CYS team showed me the book “We Are Paper Toys” by Louis Bou, which features the work of a wide variety of artists, designers and other creative minds using paper to create amazing and unique 3D toys/models from paper.

The book that gave us the idea...

Google 3D Papercraft and you’ll get approx. 1,350,000 results – including recreations of people’s heads from photo images, tugboat models, iconic computer game characters, buildings… the list goes on. It seemed like a perfect choice for a workshop aimed at 13-18 year olds.

Of course, this meant that now I got to play with paper myself in order to create the examples that would go up around the library as advertising for the workshop. And what an experience that has been!

First I found out the hard way that you really need to be working with at least a large A4 pattern… cos A5 is toooooo small. Also, ordinary paper is just too flimsy, poor little guy can barely stand up.

For something so small, he sure took a lot of time and effort...

Working on Max also reminded me to have glue on hand at all times… he’s held together with sticky tape for the most part and it just doesn’t look as good.

My next efforts were on a slightly larger scale… Undead George and Werewolf Michael Jackson.

More lessons on what not to do when playing with paper...

With Undead George I discovered that printing the pattern out in greys doesn’t look very good and colouring in with texta only mildly improves things.
However, he did teach me that the simpler patterns are definitely the easiest ones to work with. (Not really a big surprise, that one.) And that scoring the fold lines before you start trying to make the model does, in fact, make things much easier!

Werewolf Michael Jackson was a very good lesson in why you can’t use a glue stick to make these awesome toys/models – it just doesn’t work. The glue doesn’t hold things together and takes too long to dry… very frustrating when working with something as intricate as this pattern turned out to be. So sticky tape came to the rescue again… until craft glue stepped in and saved the day entirely.

This little bunny proved a challenge.

And finally, I took all the lessons that I learned from the previous three toys/models and had a go at “Nodder” …

Ta daaaaa!

and another simple pattern that creates this little guy:

Come along to the workshop and see what you can make for yourself!

 

 

Craft glue may be fiddly and scoring fold lines may take time, but it is totally worth the time and effort for the end result.

So if you’re 13-18 and would like to have a go at making some 3D Papercraft models/toys of your own, we would love to see you at the workshop on January 20 from 3pm-4pm!
Make your bookings via the library.
All the equipment and 3D Papercraft patterns will be supplied.

Memory books

Along with the Photo Frame making workshops, in the April School Holidays we also ran Memory Book workshops. The highly talented and creative kids involved decorated the pages and covers of their scrapbook/memory book in a variety of ways using collage materials such as coloured paper/card, foam stickers, mottos, letters of the alphabet and stickers. Both sessions were well attended and everyone involved had a fun time producing amazing memory books to keep precious photos in.