Touch Tank at the Library

The Riverwalk Nature Center set up a small touch tank at the library last week.  Thinking it was going to be fun for the kiddos, we headed over to check it out.  While the presentation was very informative, the representative from the nature center did not adjust her speech for her audience.  Most of the children were between 4- and 10-years-old.  The talk was geared more toward a high school or adult audience.  The children were naturally a bit bored and fidgety.

By the time the children were asked to line up for the touch tank, Wildman had been reduced to behaving like this…

Advertisement

One World, Many Stories

The boys are signed up for our library’s summer reading program, One World, Many Stories.  They earn library currency (book bucks) by reading or being read to for half an hour each day.  They will receive one book buck for every four days of reading and a bonus book buck for reading every day of the week. We have a neat little log sheet for each boy on our fridge.

Book bucks can be used to “buy” special prizes in the glass case in the children’s section.  Wildman and Cutie Pie have their eyes on a few things already.

They can also earn additional book bucks for completing a flag identification worksheet and for attending special events like Wednesday’s magic show.  The magic show was pretty entertaining.  The magician played to a packed house, as you can see!  We’re looking forward to some of the other fun events like the animal touch tank.

The boys found a bunch of fun books to check out.  They love using their library cards!  We set the timer on the microwave every night and read together for half and hour.  We’ve been asking Wildman to read a page then we read a page.  For Cutie Pie, we just read to him since he’s not quite reading on his own yet.  While J and I have always read to the boys before bed, this is a new, fun way to do it.   And we’ve found out that half an hour is longer than you think!

6th Annual Hispanic Festival- Zumba Demo

A few of the ladies who attend our Zumba class asked Stephanie and I if we would do a demonstration at the Hispanic Festival at the library where they work.  The event was last Saturday in the parking lot of the Palm Bay Library.  There were lots of awesome performances by singers and dancers from our local Hispanic community.

Steph and I, being the gringas that we are, felt a little out of place bringing Zumba to the event but we also felt honored at the same time.  You see, the library’s director bumped a large Zumba studio from the schedule in favor of us!  She felt that since she attended our class and we have strictly donation based classes that promoting our little business would be more in line with the goals of the festival than promoting a large commercial studio.

I made sure to give our library friends a special shout out for inviting us to give a demo.

We had lots of wonderful people from the crowd come up to dance with us.  This guy was especially awesome!  The swelter heat of the afternoon didn’t phase him a bit 🙂

Steph and I performed five songs that made up our 20-minute performance.  The crowd’s response was awesome- lots or cheering and dancing.  We enjoyed our time at the festival very much.

The librarians kindly set us up with some amazing food to go.  We didn’t eat at the festival because we were so incredibly hot from our workout.  Both Steph and I felt nauseous and had headaches from the heat.  I did devour the pork, plantains and rice and beans when I got home though.  Let me tell you that it was some of the best food I’ve ever had.  So, so good!

Thanks to Lisa and Josephine and all the rest of the ladies from the Palm Bay Library for having us at this awesome event!  And thanks to the Hispanic community for welcoming us!