Storytime, bugs

A little longer, but what a great message about helping others and sharing! Adorable illustrations.

Can you move with me? From Preschool Education

Sung to: "Do Your Ears Hang Low"Can you wiggle like a worm?Can you squiggle? Can you squirm?Can you flutter? Can you fly like a gentle butterfly?Can you crawl upon the groundLike a beetle that is round?Can you move with me?Can you flip? Can you flop?Can you give a little hop?Can you slither like a snake?Can you give a little shake?Can you dance like beeWho is buzzing round a tree?Can you move with me?


I had the kids help me try to name all of the bugs in the book.

Baby Bumblebee
I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee.
Won't my mommy be so proud of me?
I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee.
OUCH! It stung me.



For our craft we made bumble- b's like the one I found from All Kids Network. I used yellow construction paper and black markers. Super cute!
 

Storytime, Dance

The second to last storytime of this 12 week session had ended, only 1  left until we break for summer. This is also my last storytime session at this job. :( I'm going to miss all my kiddos, but I'm only moving to a library that is 20 minutes away, so I can still come visit if I want to be the creepy adult with no kids hanging around the children's department.

We have been having lovely spring rain for this last week, so I wanted to get the kids up and moving today.



We talked about rhyme and pacing of the story, and I let the kids bust out their favorite dance moves like Gerald, the giraffe in the story.

We simply had to keep moving with several rounds of 'head, shoulders, knees at toes' and increasingly difficult speeds.

We don't usually stand while reading books, but we had so many wigglers this morning that we stood and marched to the sounds of:



Ducks flapped, bears stomped, ladybugs tiptoed and caterpillars wiggled in this simple rhythmic movement book.

For our craft I printed out giraffes from Edupics.com to color. Then we added brown paper strips to give the giraffe its trademark mane.

Outreach Storytime, Frog

This is my last storytime at this location. I start my new position in 2 weeks, so I am wrapping up my storytimes and outreaches for the last time. *tear* I have been seeing this group twice a month for the last six months. I wanted to share some of my favorite spring books with them.


I had all of the kids stand up as we sang this one. Love the twist ending-the kids couldn't stop laughing.

Then we sang 5 green and speckled frogs. I made my frogs out of a paper towel roll similar to this one at Librarian vs. Storytime. I used clip art frogs and colored them brown and green.



I love these cumulative song stories.  They have one for each season and most holidays now; this one is about Easter. The little old lady eats a chick, some grass, an egg, etc. The kids started to sing along at the end.

Instead of reading our final book the kids asked me to re-read a book from the last visit.


The kids love it, and I love performing it. In high school, I was on the speech and debate team for 3 years, and I was absolutely horrendous at it. This book reminds me of speech performances, but in a good way. I love that I can be silly and yell and make awkward and generally unprofessional noises that would, under any normal conditions, be frowned upon.

I am excited and nervous about my new position. Hopefully it will be a good change! I will continue to update with storytime posts and programs once I get settled in to my new job!!

Storytime, Spring

Spring break equals smaller storytime numbers this week. Only 3 people last night and 10 this morning.


This one is a little long for my storytime crowds, but Easter is in a few days and I wanted to share a secular Easter book. Love the theme of perseverance. This little pig won't let anyone tell him that he can't be the Easter bunny.

As a bonus, I discovered a bag of plastic eggs in the depths of my desk, so we incorporated those into a song.

I changed the words to this song from Perpetual Preschool.
Tune :My Darling Clementine
Yellow flowers, blue flowers,
red flowers I can see.
Pink flowers, orange flowers in the garden I can see.

I passed out plastic eggs and we sang:
pink eggs, pink eggs, pink eggs I can see.
Pink eggs, pink eggs, in the garden just for me.

We went through all of the colors of eggs and the kids handed them back to me when we got to their color.


This is the perfect book to start a discussion about activities that we can do in spring.

Outreach Storytime, Books on Books

Spring has not yet sprung in the lovely Midwest yet, and the heat at the preschool was leaking and had to be shut off this morning, so I attempted to do my outreach storytime in the gym. Large, open spaces are very distracting to classes of preschoolers, and taking them out of their daily school routine causes chaos. I don't want to say that my storytime today was a complete failure, but it was pretty close.

The first 5 minutes of my planned storytime was spent wrangling the kids to come and have a seat. Then we read:


This story has beautiful illustrations, and is a little longer  than some of my stories for this age group, but the rhyming and pacing is fluid and fast, making the story fly by at a rapid pace. The kids would normally be entranced by the illustrations of this book, but not today.

I handed out magnetic letters and sang the ABC song. When we got to their  letter they had to stand up and shout their letter along with the song. Magnets, however, like gyms, are easily distracting to children in general. We almost made it through the entire alphabet before letters started flying across the floor and had to be put away quite quickly. (I was planning on having them put themselves into alphabetical order, but that just wasn't going to happen today).

Then we read one of my favorite stories:

The kids couldn't get enough, The thought it was hilarious. I  had several kids ask me to read it again even before I was finished!

We usually do another rhyme and short book, but I spent so much time getting everyone seated and sitting that we ran out of time. I did my goodbye song and left, disappointed. Hopefully the heat will return and my visit in two weeks will go better than planned.  

Preschool gardening

My library doesn't do a lot of programming on the weekends, since there is only one staff member per department and we are only open 4 hours on Sundays, so I like to come up with fun weekend programs when I am working. I try to find programs that require minimal set-up so that I can maximize my time on-desk.

Since this program was created for children ages 3 years to grade 3, we read a story to set the mood.


This story is a little long for the younger crowd, but includes all of the vocabulary associated with gardening, like root crops, perennials, and pollination.

Then we decorated our pots. I found a kit from Oriental Trading, and bought two packages of bean seeds. For some unknown reason, I discovered a bag of dirt in a craft cabinet, so I used that as well. I love these pots because they don't have giant holes in the bottom for dirt and water to spill out. Everyone got a pot and packet of foam shapes and markers to decorate. Note; the foam shapes do not have adhesive backs, so glue is necessary, plan accordingly for younger ones.  
When they were done decorating they could fill their pot with dirt. I placed a bucket of dirt with several spoons on a tarp on the floor. Once their pot was full I let them choose two seeds to plant, about 2 inches down. We had 20 children attend this Sunday afternoon program.

Lightbulb Lab, Force and Motion

I do a once a month science program for grades 3 and up, this month the theme was force and motion. I like to choose at least 4 experiments or activities based around a central theme. I wanted to really focus on Newton's laws, so I rounded up a few fun activities to explain the theories.

The cost of this program: FREE!

Materials: ten pennies, plastic cup, cardboard, tape, pencil, plastic knife, iPad (optional, to watch Steve Spangler videos), piece of fabric, plastic dinnerware.

Activity 1 was a coin trick. You place a piece of cardboard over the top of a cup (we used plastic for safety reasons) and place a penny on the cardboard. When you flick the cardboard the penny drops into the cup.

For activity 2 was a more complicated coin trick. We turned our flat piece of cardboard into a hoop and placed the penny on top of the hoop, and balanced that on top of the same glass. Using a pencil, we quickly hit the hoop to force it into motion and watched as the penny, again, went directly into the cup. We discussed the reasons behind this and the kids gave their best scientific theories.

Then we discussed what Newton's laws mean-that an object in motion (the cardboard) wants to stay in motion, but an object at rest (the penny) wants to stay at rest, and is affected by the forces of gravity pulling it toward the cup.

We watched a video for activity 3. I was too nervous to do this demonstration on our carpeted library floor, so we watched this video from Steve Spangler Science. (I really wanted to do this demonstration for all of our school tours for "Fizz, Boom, Read," but the director wasn't so thrilled with the idea.)

For activity 4 we made a coin tower. We stacked ten pennies on a tabletop and used a plastic butter knife to hit out the bottom coin. I challenged the kids to see who could swipe out the most coins, one by one, from the bottom of the stack before it fell over.

Activity 5 was by far the most entertaining demonstration we did. Everyone has seen the tablecloth trick, where you pull the tablecloth out from under the plates of food. I used some of the plastic dishes and cutlery from our early learning kitchen, but if you really trust your kids you could use real china. I taught them the correct way to pull out a tablecloth and gave them each 2 tries.

Storytime, Cows

It finally feels like spring! I just had to do a farm storytime this morning.


Love this cumulative story, the kids really enjoyed making all of the farm animal noises with me. A few kids were stuck on "how did the animal heads get on the bodies?'

Song: Old MacDonald had a farm. I had the kids help me choose three farm animals to sing about-we chose cows, ducks and roosters.


I have used this before in  outreach storytimes, and I was initially worried about using this title with younger ones, but they helped me tell the story. One little girl yelled 'The cow is going to get a time out, he's been bad!" so I knew that they got it.

Craft: I used the head and legs from this template 
I let the kids color the pieces and then glue them to an empty toilet paper roll.

Storytime, Friends

Spring means more storytime friends, so I did a friendship theme. We had 30 people today, which is a lot, especially considering the size of our storytime room can usually only accommodate 25.


I love this story, and am waiting for a personal copy to come any day now :) The illustrations are gorgeous, and I have been wanting to read this in storytime for a while. Dan Santat is one of my favorite authors!

Song:Make New Friends via ScoutSongs
Make new friends,
but keep the old.
One is silver,
the other is gold.

A circle is round,
it has no end.
That's how long,
I will be your friend.

We only sang the first two verses, and repeated twice.

We only read the first half of the book, I would love to someday learn enough Japanese to read both sides and sing the song in the middle of the text. 

Craft: Crowns! Our friend Beekle wore a crown, so we can too! I found the printable at Firstpallette crafts.I pre-cut all of the crowns and set out crayons and foam shapes for decoration. We had so many gorgeous crowns fit for princes and princesses!

Outreach Storytime, Green

With St. Patrick's Day just around the corner I wanted to read books about the color green today.



We discussed some of the more unfamiliar Irish terms in the story like laddies and lassies, shamrock fife and shillelagh. I enjoy this book for the rhymes and pacing of the story-short enough to read for storytime, but more difficult language than most of the books I share.

Song: 5 Green and Speckled Frogs from DLTK.
Five green and speckled frogs sat on a speckled log 
Eating some most delicious bugs -- YUM YUM! One jumped into the pool where it was nice and cool Then there were four green and speckled frogs.

I love using the Bear books in storytime, although this is not one of my favorites for storytime sharing. The i spy feel would work better for one on one sharing.

Song: 5 Green peas from Toddler Storytime.
Five little peas in a pea pod pressed. 
1 grew, 2 grew and so did all the rest 
They grew and they grew
And they did not stop 
Until one day, that pod went, Pop! 

I used 5 jumbo pom poms and threw them in the air at the end. We repeated this song 4 times. 

Outreach Storytime, Fractured Fairytales-Three Little Pigs

I took the format from last month and ran with it, the school-age kids seem to enjoy the fractured versions of their favorite tales.

I made craft stick puppets and had several 2nd grade volunteers help me tell the original story. Then we talked about what we could do to make the story different. I introduced words like protagonist, antagonist and point of view to determine who was telling the tale, and who is telling which tale.

Book:

We discussed the wolf's point of view and how different characters can see the same situation in different ways (I am still trying to come up with a great way to tie this into the topic of bullying, but I am drawing a blank so far.) We did discuss the actions that the pigs or the wolf could take to be a better friend.

Book:

I love the rhymes in this book. And Dan Santat is my hero-his picture book The Adventures of Beekle is the 2015 Caldecott Award winner. We discussed the similarities and differences between each book and the original story and made a triple Venn diagram on giant post-it note posters.

Storytime, Hair

Flannelboard: Little cat, little cat, are you under the red hat?

I copied and pasted several types of clip art hats-baseball cap, hockey mask, cowboy hat, top hat, etc. and hid a picture of a kitten behind one. We love doing guessing games in storytime!



Rhyme: These are Grandma's glasses from Storytime Katie
These are Grandma’s glasses
This is Grandma’s hat
This is the way she folds her hands
And lays them in her lap
Here are Grandpa’s glasses
And here is Grandpa’s hat
And here’s the way he folds his arms
And takes a little nap

Song: Silly hat song from Sur La Lune
On my head, I wear my hat.It is such a silly hatThat my head will wiggle waggle to and froWhere else can my silly hat go?
[Repeat using foot, elbow and knee.] 


I found inspiration for this craft from Chadwick's Picture Place. For our craft we did haircuts. I drew out faces and upper bodies and let the little ones draw a face and glue on strips of paper and give their character a haircut.

Storytime, Bedtime

Holy Storytime crowd, batman! I had triple the number of little ones today! This month I have averaged about 8 people at storytime, today we had 25!

 
Everyone's favorite rhyming book recently, this is becoming a favorite character at storytime.

I asked questions about if the dark was scary and what we can do to help calm ourselves if we get scared of the dark.

We sang twinkle twinkle little star.


This one didn't go over so well. The kids were confused about the bear living in a refrigerator and why the animals were flying. So we talked about dreams and how when we use our imagination, whether we are dreaming or playing pretend that anything can happen.

We talked about what we need to do before we get ready for bed, and flowed that into:

 

This story is so adorable, well written and wonderfully short. The parents with smaller ones in laps particularly enjoyed the tickle bug page. This would work better for a one-on-one bedtime book than for use in storytime.

Craft: I borrowed this lovely idea from Confessions of a Real Librarian. I brought out crayons and tissue paper to decorate as well. I did choose to not bring out the googly eyes, we had quite a few crawlers in the room and I only had minuscule eyes left in the package, so we drew our own.

Outreach Storytime, Monkey

The schools in the county have had a 5 day weekend due to the deep freeze this winter, so I made sure to do a lot of movement activities with the preschoolers this week during outreach. Nothing says winter like -20 degree wind chills and no recess for weeks.

Opening song: If You're Ready for a Story Take a Seat

 
This is one of my favorite books lately. I love the audience participation aspect and the vocabulary.

Go bananas song- this is a boy scout camp song, the kids just go crazy once I explain to them what it means to 'go bananas'. The song is super long so I pick and choose what lyrics to sing.

Form banana, form form banana. (Arms above head in banana shape.)
Form banana, form form banana.
Peel banana, peel, peel banana. (One arm down.)
Peel banana, peel, peel banana. (Other arm down.)
Go bananas! Go, go bananas! (Jump up and go bananas.)
Go bananas! Go, go bananas!


This is such a classic, but one that doesn't get enough attention. The smallest ones can sing their ABC's but can only pick out the letter in their names, so we are working on letter recognition the next few months.

I wanted to get the kids up and moving, so I handed everyone a magnetic alphabet tile and we put ourselves in alphabetical order. Some kids had the same letter, but we sang our ABCs several times while getting into line.

 

With below zero wind chills for the last week and a half, I needed to get everyone up and moving, so I brought out the parachute as we chanted 'Five Little Monkeys Jumping On the Bed'. I have a smaller parachute, so I had one group sit under the parachute while the other group bounced our finger puppet pals.

Goodbye song: G-O-O-D-B-Y-E

Nursery Rhyme Olympics

Today marked the 2nd Annual Preschool Nursery Rhyme Olympics. I set up 7 stations around the room, this way the preschoolers can wander through each station with no time limits. This allows me to float around the room and interact with parents and give instructions, as well as ways of incorporating sneaky math into some of our activities.



Station 1: Humpty Dumpty puzzles
       I used the printable from I Heart Crafty Things and made 4 copies. I color coded the back with marker, and had the kids find match the colors first and then complete the puzzle.

Station 2: Baa Baa Black Sheep wool matching
        I took 4 small white boxes and taped a piece of construction paper to the lid. I brought out a handful of pom poms and let the kids match the pom poms to the color of the box. Once they were finished matching, they could take them out, count them by color and set the game up for the next person.

Station 3: Jack and Jill pail toss
       Rolled up blue socks become water drops to throw into an empty pail.

Station 4: Help Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers
       Walk from one end of the room to the other with green pom poms balanced on a small shovel. I asked kids to guess how many pom poms they could carry each trip and how many trips they would need to carry all of the pom poms.

Station 5: Help Little Bo Peep match up her sheep
       I found a free clip art template and colored in our sheep. I also added shapes and patterns to some of the cards to make them more difficult to match. There were 10 sheep to match.


Station 6: Jump over a candlestick like Jack.
       Toilet paper tubes and gift wrap tubes became candles in this movement activity, like the one from AllKids Network. I asked the participants how tall they thought the candlestick was and we estimated how high they could jump. I left a ruler near this station so the kids could measure the height of the candlestick.


Station 7: Three Little Kitten have lost their mittens craft
       I found the cutest cat craft from Krokotak and let the kids color their cat with crayons. I pre-cut all of the shapes before the program, but left the tail in a single piece so that the kids can work on cutting skills.


Inspiration for this program came from Hubbards Cupboard and So Tomorrow.

*Note: I don't know if it was because I chose to do the program on a Sunday afternoon, or if it was because we are in the middle of a deep freeze in Northern Ohio, but only 2 families came to the program this year. Last year attendance was 13.

Chinese New Year

*Note: This was my planned program. I had everything set up, but no one came due to snow.

As the kids entered into the party room, I handed them each a card. We discussed the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, as the kids unfolded their cards. I found the cards and the game at Activity Village. The goal of the game is to make the animal sound on your card and walk around the room to find the other person or persons that match you card.

Then we read parts from Happy new Year! by Demi. We talked about the lion dances and the lantern festival, and many of the other traditions to celebrate the spring harvest season. 

Then we made paper lanterns to prepare for our own little lantern parade . 

Outreach Storytime, Fractured Fairytales-Cinderella

I do a joint K-1-2 storytime once a month, usually the 3 classes equal about 50 kids. We meet in the hallway between the gym and the rear entrance to the school (not my choice, it is freezing!). While this is not ideal, the kids are fantastic. This year I wanted to focus on comparing and contrasting skills, so we stared with discussing the Cinderella story. We talked about characters and basic plot. Then we read Cinderella's Rat by Susan Meddaugh.


We discussed how the story and characters were different from the Cinderella story we told at the beginning. This led to a quick discussion about multiple viewpoints.

I brought out the giant post-it note pad and tried to play the ABC animals game (naming an animal that starts with each letter of the alphabet), but some of the older kids got a little too rowdy, so we didn't get to finish.

We moved into reading Seriously, Cinderella is so Annoying by Trisha Shaskan.



We talked about how different characters had different viewpoints and how a single story can be distorted depending on who is telling it.

We ran out of time before I could tell the 'piece de resistance'- the tale of Rindercella. I was introduced to this story by a worship leader in college who would tell this story at the beginning of every year to get a few laughs and introduce himself. The origins of this story come from Matthew Goldman, and is called a spoonerism tale; many of the first letters of words are mixed up. It is difficult to read, but so exciting to say out loud. It is by far my favorite story to tell with the school-age kids (I think I tell it at least once a year).

Outreach Storytime, Love

This week's outreach storytime theme is Valentines Day/Hearts/Love



Tony Chestnut song from The Learning Station.
Tony Chestnut knows I love you. 
Tony knows.
 Tony knows.
 Tony Chestnut knows I love you. 
That’s what Tony knows.



Skinnamarink from Wikipedia.
Skinnamarinky dinky dink
Skinnamarinky do,
I love you!

Skinnamarinky dinky dink
Skinnamarinky do,
I love you!

I love you in the morning,
And in the afternoon
I love you in the evening,
Underneath the moon…

Skinnamarinky dinky dink
Skinnamarinky do,
I love you!



*Note: My kids weren't quite feeling the love today. Several were fairly vocal about expressing their opposition to me interrupting their day with 'gross kissing books' and 'i don't wanna's' today.