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Sunday, March 10, 2013

Storytime Swap 2013: Share a Treasure!


Back in December, I tweaked the idea behind Cookie Swapping and offered an unusual opportunity for anyone who might be interested in something new and different

Storytime Swap!


Click picture to visit the post about the first swap.

The first one was hugely successful! 


In fact, it was so fun ~ for the participants and for those visiting our Blog Hop where we shared our swapped items ~ that my inbox has been flooded with requests for another swap before next December.

I thought about several options and decided to offer another Storytime Prop Swap that could be tied into Summer Reading, a program offered at most libraries across the US. (I'll explain more later in the post.) 

This year's theme at my library is Dig into Reading!  Playing off that phrase, here is what I came up with for our swap:




This swap is for anyone who would like to share and receive a storytime prop 

~ a wonderful STORYTIME TREASURE! ~ 

Would that "anyone" be you? 

I hope so! 

We had over a dozen swaps last time. Will there be more this time? I am really hoping to have more! The more ~ the merrier!

The rules for our Share a TREASURE! Swap are very simple.
  
You may exchange with your Swap Partner any item that you feel has been a fun treasure that you have used while interacting with a child and a book.



Your exchange item could be:










or

really anything at all that YOU love to use in your storytimes or your classrooms or with your own child to help him/her/them feel connected to books and have fun learning.

This is all about sharing YOUR excitement for one of your favorite books, fingerplays, games, rhymes, dances, songs, creative movement activities, etc. 

What do you consider to be a treasure?

The theme for this Swap is Dig into Reading! so please try to fit your treasure into this topic. As you can see from my examples above, there are many ways to do just that. Anything related to Gardening, Pirates, Dinosaurs, animals that live underground like Worms or Moles, Volcanoes, Eygptian Mummies, etc would be good.  But most importantly:

Be creative! 
And have fun!

The exchange will be set-up like this:

1) Each person will need to contact me before March 24th by email at storytimeabcs@gmail.com

(Please be sure to email me a second time or tweet me on Twitter @StorytimeFun or message me on Facebook ~ if you do not receive a confirmation email within 48 hours. I don't want to miss anyone but we all know that the cyberspace monsters do eat emails sometimes or they end up in a SPAM folder somewhere.)

2) Please include your first and last name, full physical address ~ including zipcode ~ and the type of item you would like to share with a swap partner. ALSO please include the answer to this question: Are you willing to be paired with an INTERNATIONAL partner?  

***We are lucky enough to have a number of participants from other countries but I know the cost may be higher to send items out of country. It is possible to pair partners by country but it is so awesome to share and receive with someone outside our normal area that I don't want to choose that option unless necessary. Please indicate whether or not you are willing to spend a little extra to have an international partner.

3) By March 26th, I will place all names in a hat and draw two out at a time. Those two people will be swap partners. They will send each other the item(s) that they want to share. I chose this way of exchanging so that each pair of partners will be spending about the same amount of money to mail their items to each other.

4) If you would like to participate more than once, please let me know in this first email. The number of times you swap is only limited by your commitment to spend the money necessary to create and mail your items. I personally will probably exchange with several people because I LOVED getting all the surprises in the mail through our last swap! In the end, I wished I had had MORE swap partners!

5) Once partners are paired, I will contact both people by one email with the name and address  of their exchange partner. Contact information will include: name, snail mail address and email address. Then each pair of partners will be free to visit and learn more about each other so that when you share the swap items with your child(ren), you can also share a little about the sender.

6) When signing up for the exchange, please be sure that you will be able  to mail your item before April 5th. That way everyone should be receiving their swap item before anyone's Summer begins.

I hope you are as excited as I am about the chance to have 
new Storytime 
TREASURES 
for Summer Reading!

Believe me, this more FUN than you imagine!

I am hoping to hear from lots and lots of you very soon!

Don't miss the FUN!

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