Make Your Own 6 by 6 Happy Birthday Video

Help Celebrate the 10th Birthday of 6 by 6!

That’s right, Johnson County Library’s award-winning early literacy program is turning 10!

We want YOU to participate with a short, simple, video! Grab your smart phone, or record from your tablet or laptop!

How? There are 2 easy options!

1) Happy Birthday Message
Script: (feel free to improvise)
“Hi! I’m (insert name here). I want to wish 6 by 6 a Happy Birthday!”
Then, upload it to your favorite social media site: (Facebook, twitter, YouTube) and use the hashtag #6by6

2) Act out one of the 6 by 6 Activities
Script: (again, please feel free to improvise)
“Hi! I’m (insert name here). To help celebrate the 10 birthday of 6 by 6, I encourage you to Have Fun with Books (or substitute the underlined with any of the other 6 by 6 skills numbered below)”
Then, pick one of the suggested actions to demonstrate/act out. For instance, if you choose the skill: Have Fun with Books, you could hold up your Library card and maybe say, “This isn’t just a Library Card. It’s a passport to unimaginable realms!”
OR
Flip through the pages of a wordless picture book and narrate it.
OR
Give a book as a gift to a friend.

Just be sure to take a video of whatever you do.

Then, upload it to your favorite social media site: (Facebook, twitter, YouTube) and use the hashtag #6by6      

1. Have Fun with Books
Suggestions:

  • Get a library card
  • Visit a library.
  • Let a child help you select books
  • Check-out books
  • “Read” a picture book
  • Take books wherever you go: doctor’s office, in the car, at the grocery store, in the park
  • Give books as gifts

2. Look for Letters Everywhere
Suggestions:

  • Look at the picture of the 6 by 6 peacock and find the letters
  • Cut sandpaper letters to use for rubbings. Put printer paper on top of the letters and rub over it with the long side of a crayon
  • Hold up a letter and point to an object that begins with that letter - “D” point to toy dinosaur
  • Point out shapes that look like letters
  • Make a letter collage
  • Say a sentence with words that all begin with the same letter sound (alliteration) like: the baby bounced bravely by broadway boulevard by Boddington Bay
  • Make “alphabet soup” by gluing letters on to paper
  • Make letter shapes and letters out of clay, in shaving cream, in fingerpaint

3. Notice Print All Around You
Suggestions:

  • Put together a puzzle that has pictures and letters or words
  • Let a child help you make a shopping list
  • Write, and announce what letter you’re creating
  • Have children help read a recipe
  • Identify print on t-shirts, boxes and signs
  • Hand a book to your child upside down, and see if she turns it around

4. Take Time to Rhyme
Suggestions:

  • Name as many words that rhyme with “goat” as you can.
  • Sing a rhyming song
  • Make silly words that sound alike: Michael Motorcycle, Emily Bemily
  • Use these word endings to create rhymes: _ed (red, bed, fed) _at (bat, cat, mat) _ing (bring, sing, ring) _ight (sight, light, fight)

5. Talk, Talk, Talk
Suggestions:

  • Talk about the pictures in a book
  • Find a real-life item of of something depicted in a book
  • Label items in your home or car: doors, chairs, windows, etc. (use sticky notes?)
  • Have a child describe the illustrations in a book
  • Pick a word and give it’s definition

6. Tell Stories About Everything
Suggestions:

  • Put your day into a story!
  • Sort items (buttons, blocks, etc.) by size, shape and color
  • Ask a child to tell you about his or her day
  • Have your child draw a picture. Then let them tell you what is happening in the picture.
  • Count common things you see (like clouds)