The Star Box

I was cleaning up my work stuff the other day (in my real life, I'm a Children's Librarian) and I found my "Star Box".  It's an ornament box from Bloomingdale's (I used to live a few blocks from Bloomies in Manhattan and bought a lot of ornaments from there ... and for every ornament I bought, I got an ornament box because they are cute and cool and great for storage.)

At my old library, we were lucky enough to have an Ellison Machine.  I wish I'd had the foresight to make better use of it ... it would have been a great way to make the sandpaper letters that I keep meaning to make ... but I digress ... I used the star die for the Ellison Machine to make a boat load of felt stars.  So much faster and easier than with scissors, but you could do that, too.

So at the end of my toddler programs, I'd pull out the Stars.  Every child would come up and get 1 star for themselves and 1 for their Big Person (my way of addressing Mommies, Daddies, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Babysitters and Nannies in one sweeping statement.)  They would return and sit down, and we'd talk about the stars.  Count the points.  Look at the colour.  I'd run through the colour and have each child hold them up if they had that colour.  We'd see if they were soft (they're felt, so of course they're soft.)  We'd also see if they'd stick to our shirts - sometimes they would and sometimes they wouldn't ... it all depended on what they were wearing. 

We'd say the Star Rhyme ... "star light, star bright, first star I see tonight ..." and I would often hold up the Richard Scarry Nursery Rhyme Book page (a childhood favourite of mine!) for everyone to see while we said the rhyme.

The we'd sing "Twinkle Twinkle", and sometimes run into "The ABC Song" and "Baa Baa" as they all have the same tune.  Sometimes I'd have some props for the ABC song, sometimes not.  I did have a stuffed sheep (a Serta Counting Sheep, actually.  a treasured gift from a now passed dear friend) and I'd pull it out for Baa Baa.

And then we'd say good bye to the stars and the kids would come up and put them back in the box for me.

And that was my Star Box. 

And why am I writing about my Star Box?  Well, because when I found it this week, I put it to good use in another way.

But that's another post.