Hello everyone, welcome to Storytime With The Met. My name is Kamaria, you can call me miss K,
if you like. So looking forward to reading a story to you all today,
and you can join us every Thursday at noon. We read a story together,
we sing songs, we do activities, and we talk about the art that these stories remind us of,
that we have at The Met. So if you're ready, let's get started. We begin with our story time
song, it goes to the tune of This Old Man. And please sing along if you already know it. Okay...
[singing] Welcome friends! Get ready, get set! For Storytime With The Met, where we love to read
and sing and look at works of art and picture books. We use our eyes to look and see,
we use our ears to hear stories. Now we'll take a seat and give a shhhh...
Let's begin now with our book. [Stops singing] Thank you so much everybody. Our book today is
The Snowy Day. I bet some of you have read this one before, or had this one read to you before,
but it is a fantastic book. I hope it's snowing where some of you all are. It's
not snowing where I am, but I love snow, so I'm going to read you this
book today about a little boy named Peter who goes on a snowy adventure.
And this book is written by Ezra Jack Keats, let's see what happens to Peter on his snowy day.
[reading]
One winter morning, Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night
and everything- it covered everything as far as he could see.
After breakfast, he put on his snow suit and ran outside. The snow was piled up
very high along the street to make a path for walking. [aside] Have you ever seen that
where you live? How high has the snow been piled up where you live, if you get snow?
[reading] Crunch, crunch, crunch, his feet sank into the snow. He walked with his toes
pointing out like this. He walked with his toes pointing in like that.
Then he dragged his feet slowly to make tracks. And he found something sticking
out of the snow that made a new track. [aside] What was it do you think he
found? What could possibly been sticking out of the snow that made that line?
It was a stick. A stick that was just right for smacking a snow-covered tree.
Down fell the snow-- plop!-- on top of Peter's head.
[aside]
Doesn't seem bothered though, he's onto his next adventure. Where do you think he's going next?
[reading] He thought it would be fun to join the big boys in their snowball fight,
but he knew he wasn't old enough-- not yet. [aside] still got hit with one though.
Gotta dodge. [reading] So he made a smiling snowman, and he made angels.
He pretended he was a mountain-climber. He climbed
up a great big tall heaping mountain of snow and-- slid all the way down. [aside] Whoa!
[reading]
He picked up a handful of snow-- and another and still another. He packed it
round and firm and put the snowball in his pocket for tomorrow. Then he went into his warm house.
He told his mother all about his adventures while she took off his wet socks.
And he thought and thought and thought about them. [aside]
He's already in the bath, but he's still thinking about his fun day. Do you ever do that?
[reading]
Before he got into bed, he looked in his pocket. His pocket was empty. The snowball wasn't there.
He felt very sad. [aside] What do you think happened to it?
He brought a cold snowball into a warm
house... [reading] While he slept,
he dreamed that the sun had melted [aside] oh yeah! [reading] all the snow away.
But when he woke up, his dream was gone. The snow was still everywhere. New snow was falling!
After breakfast, he called to his friend from across the hall,
and they went out together into the deep, deep snow.
The end. thank you all so much that was such great listening. I hope you enjoyed that story
and I hope you all have some fun in snow, if it snows where you live. And if it doesn't,
at least you got to read the story, right? So we have a lot of art at The Met that has snow in it,
but the one I picked for us today is called "Evening Snow at Uchikawa"
and it's by a Japanese artist named Utagawa Hiroshige. It's from 1936 and it's a wood- wood
block print. It has a beautiful lake full of snow, and a tiny little village nestled in the snow,
and three people walking. One of them's carrying something on their shoulders. And so what are
some of the things you notice about this print? Like where do you think those people are going?
Are they playing in the snow like Peter? Are they working? One of them's carrying something.
Or maybe they're going to see somebody, bringing them food. So what can you imagine? Imagine you're
there in the snow, what would you most like to do if you found yourself in a snowy little village?
I think I would like to go sledding. I like to make angels like Peter did,
and I would like to drink hot chocolate, but that's just me. I wonder what sorts of things
you all can imagine. I bet you all have great imaginations, so think about your own snowy days.
Alright, before we go, I'm going to show you how to make snowflakes for our activity. Can't have
a snowy day without a snowflake, and luckily you only need two things really to make a good
snowflake: a square sheet of paper. Um this one's kind of small, you might want to use a bigger one
if this is your first time making snowflakes. And some scissors. And that's it, that's all you need!
So to start out, you take your square sheet of paper
and fold it so that the corners line up like that, and then fold it again along here.
Fold that triangle right in half to make another triangle, like that.
And this is where it gets a little different. We're not ready to start cutting yet. From here
you want to divide this into three parts, so you've kind of got to use your eyes for this,
get someone to help you. But you're going to fold one piece across like that and then fold
the other piece across kind of like that. It's hard to do sitting up. But when you unfold it you
should see three different ones, and it might take some finagling, but you want it to look like this,
just like this. So from here you're ready to go. The first thing you want to do is cut off
the top right here. You can cut in any way you like. You see I drew on mine,
so when I cut this, I would cut it off like that.
But you can cut a sharp down, like that or you can just take off the top completely flat,
but just make sure these two parts come off. And next you see where I colored in the lines,
this is where I would cut out the shape. It's a little too hard to do sitting up like this but I
just wanted to show you where I shaded things in, that's where I would cut out the paper,
and you just do any shape you like, down one side and down the other side. Try not to do a shape
straight across, or it'll make your your snowflake smaller and maybe you didn't want that. But yeah,
just up one side and down the other and then when you unfold, after you've made all your cuts,
you'll get something that looks like what I showed you before. You can also use color paper. Your
snowflakes don't have to be white. I made one that is gold and I've never seen a golden snowflake,
but it's nice to have one that I made myself. Alright, that's it. Thank you all so much for
coming to Storytime, look forward to seeing you next time, have a good one. Bye, have a great day!