Ooh La La! It's a Fancy Nancy story time soiree!

 Good Morning! I'm taking a deep breath and feeling the inside of my nose freeze as it was a *brisk* -14 this morning!I'm also breathing easy because my marathon of youth events for February is over! I was trying out running a bunch of events in a concentrated chunk, then taking a break and then resuming with another chunk of events. After Pigeon story time, movie night, Lego night, candy science night, I was ready for the girls to have their turn to shine at the Fancy Nancy story time Soiree! I will admit that I don't have a lot of experience when it comes to girls. I have two boys at home. I grew up having one brother, the majority of my life experience has been in male heavy environments. Now, professionally, being a librarian and a teacher, I have TONS of experience in working with women and it's great! However, I was still nervous about how this would go over. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised.




I decided to break up the event into two sections.
1.) The story time section
2.) The tea party/activities section

 As the guests arrived, I took special care to greet them all in french and give them a deep bow. I had on my brown suit, matching shoes, and my brightest purple shirt and a wild tie! The ladies at the circulation desk also hooked me up with some yellow and purple flowers for my pocket and I wore my thick rimmed glasses, complete with blue and green jewel stickers on the ear pieces. Anyway, the girls take this event very seriously! The hair was adorable, the dresses were exquisite, and the fancy attitude was off the charts!

 So, I started with a fancy word match. I had the girls match the fancy word to the picture on the magnet board.
Pere = dad
Mere = mom
Plume = feather
Tome = book
Soeur = sister
parfait = sundae

That was lots of fun. I read through Fancy Nancy and the Fabulous Fashion Boutique and Bonjour Butterfly first. I think, for those not in the know, Nancy comes off as kind of spoiled and a little bit annoying. I also think she might get a bad rap as stereotyping young girls or encouraging a standard for little girls. DON'T BE DECEIVED! Nancy is a great character with real emotional depth. Each book teaches many wonderful lessons for kids such as putting others before yourself or overcoming jealousy when a friend gets something that you want.

After the first two books, we had our first group activity. Before the evening, I built a playlist of music that I felt would be appropriate for this type of event. We had Chopin, Liszt, and Debussy accompanying us on our posture walk. To do this, I first put down some plastic circles on the floor in a path that wound around and through the rooms of the upstairs at our library. I pulled a bunch of larger books (I used How-To Draw books) for the girls to balance on their heads. I explained that to have exquisite posture we needed to keep our heads high, look straight ahead and walk slowly. I carried the library ipod and portable speaker and once the girls were lined up with books on their heads, we elegantly sauntered through the library. It was lots of fun! There were lots of giggles and lots of falling books!

I then read Fancy Nancy and The Mermaid Ballet to finish up the story time section of the event.

I have found a lot of success in using an open format for the activity portion of events for kids. After the stories, I tell all of the kids all the options they have, I tell them where I'm going to be and then I let them go and choose the order in which they want to do the activities. So for last night we had the following activities that I won't be going into a nauseating amount of detail over.

1.) A Bonjour Butterlfy scavenger hunt- I printed colored butterflies, labeled them by number, laminated them, and stuck them around the upper floor of the library. There were ten in all. The kids had a checklist to fill out and each girl got a goodie bag when they finished. The bag had a Candy Necklace, a Candy Bracelet with a tiara charm, two Jolly Ranchers, and two plastic jewel rings. All prizes came from Oriental Trading.

2.) Foam Tiara/Jewel sticker craft- I ordered the foam tiaras and stickers from Oriental Trading. I just set them out at a table and the girls knew what to do.

3.) From the Fancy Nancy event kit I printed out some coloring pages and word searches.

4.) Our clerk, Deb baked some custom Fancy Nancy Cookies in the shape of sunglasses, nail polish, tiaras, etc...So I had some place settings with plates, napkins, and other things from Dollar General. I served the cookies and Pink lemonade. The cups were a group effort. I bought the plastic cups from Dollar General, Avalon, our cataloging librarian, came up with the curling ribbon, and then our clerk, Deb suggested I use the foam flower stickers. The girls loved the cups. Most of them took them home as souvenirs. Cheap and effective. A big hit!