Story Time: The Kissing Hand

It's my last Story Time as the Children's Services Librarian at my current library! :( So this special The Kissing Hand Story Time was my grand finale. We did a teddy bear workshop from Noah's Ark Animal Workshop to stuff our own toy raccoons for the craft!

This was my first experience doing a Teddy Bear Workshop, and it was definitely a hit with the kids (and parents!). And look how cute the raccoon is! Even has a little heart on his hand. It comes with the fabric rainbow star to do a Star Wishing Ceremony with the kids (which was really sweet and perfect for the Story Time age group!). It went like this:

Hold your star in the sky and wave it back and forth to make it magical

Count to three. Close your eyes and think of a wish.

Kiss the star and rub it on your heart to give your raccoon lots of love

Rub the star on your head to make it super smart, like you

Rub the star on your eyes so your raccoon can see you

Rub the star on your ears so your raccoon can hear you

It was expensive, even using the promotion that we took advantage of, so it's definitely a special occasion thing. With the promotion we used, the raccoons were discounted to $11 a pop, when they are regularly $16. This price includes the raccoon, stuffing, wish star, birth certificate, take home tote bag and one paperback copy of the story (per order, not per raccoon).

I did the Star Wishing Ceremony first, before stuffing the raccoons, and made little copies of instructions for each place setting.

Once everyone was finished working on their raccoons, I gave out cupcakes. I found these cute raccoon cupcake wrappers online and printed them out.

Because The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn is a little long for my age group, it's the only book I read for this Story Time. I did have Raccoon Tune by Nancy Shaw on standby as another raccoon book should I need it, but did not end up reading it. They were much too excited to get to the craft, anyway.