National Cupcake Day - December 15

45 minutes

Intended for 25 guests, grades 2-4

Supplies

"Little Mouse and the Big Cupcake" by Thomas Taylor
"Cupcake: A Journey to Special" by Charise Mericle Harper
"If you give a cat a cupcake..." by Laura Numeroff
25 plain cupcakes
Decorative frosting
Sprinkles and assorted decorative candy
OR Pre-made (store bought) cupcakes (If your library has strict food preparation rules)
Harper Collins Cupcake Coloring page
Crayons
Markers
Sprinkles
Sparkles
Pom-poms
Name tags

Program

As children come in, ask them what their favorite cupcake is, and write it on a name tag along with their name.  They can then share with others their name and their favorite cupcake.  If you want to get fancy, you can have cupcake shaped name tags, perhaps made from a cupcake shaped Ellison dye (if your library is lucky to own one), or just create a rough cupcake shape, cut it out, put some double sided tape on it and call it a day! 

For this program, you can read how ever many books work best for you based on how many activities you are doing.

Post story activity 1. 
Use the Harper Collins Cupcake Coloring page and have the children decorate their own cupcake using the art supplies. 

If you will not be doing activity 2, I suggest that you read the Numeroff book, because this activity page comes from that book.  Also, if you are not having the children decorate their own real cupcake to eat, then you should have packaged cupcakes for the children to eat.  What's National Cupcake Day without eating a cupcake?  

Post story activity 2.
Have the children decorate their own plain cupcakes with frosting and edible decore to eat. 

This concludes the program, and hopefully the kids are happy, because they have just had a fantastic cupcake day.  Cupcakes make everyone happy, right?  Yes.  The answer to that rhetorical question is yes.