My Imagination!

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I have been struggling a bit to come up with themes for storytime (I need to do more without themes, I realize). But imagination fell into my lap and I just rolled with it.  Kids get really excited about using their imagination.  When do grown-ups lose that?  We need more imagination in our lives.

BOOKS:

We read It's an Orange Aardvark! by Michael Hall and Not a Stick by Antoinette Portis.  I love love love these books so much.  It's an Orange Aardvark! is a great way to introduce parents to dialogic reading.  (Actually now that I think about it, both of them are.)  The carpenter ants repeat the color they see and then add a further descriptor.  "It's green!  Green like the grass!"  Just brilliant.  With Not a Stick, one could ask questions about the pictures.  If it isn't a stick, what is it in this picture?  What else do you see?  My storytime is skewing younger again so these were short, to the point, and were great for pre-preschoolers and toddlers.

ACTION SONG:

I couldn't think of a good song for imagination, so I thought we'd just PRETEND we were in an elevator and sing The Elevator Song.  (Seriously, this theme is pure gold, children's librarians, just whatever you want to do, you just have to PRETEND.)  If you don't know the Elevator Song, stop what you're doing immediately and watch this video.  The Elevator Song is one of my all time favorite songs to sing with kids.  And adults from time to time.

SONG:

Our dancing/singing song at the end of storytime this week was BOTH "Dinosaur Stomp" by Koo Koo Kangaroo and "Robot Dance" by the Pop-Ups.  On Tuesday, "Robot Dance" wasn't working on my tablet, so we did the "Dinosaur Stomp."  Here are both videos for your listening enjoyment.

CRAFT:

I knew I wanted to do some sort of process craft with this theme, and I found this on one of those 50 Process Crafts to do with Your Kid things on Pinterest and thought, hey, old library cards would be perfect for this!

We painted using plastic cards as our paint brushes.  It was interesting.  Most of the kids liked it after they got over the initial weirdness of no brushes.  I just love the way the art turned out.  It's bright and brilliant and the paint has such a different look and texture than it would if you used a regular paintbrush.

Pajama Time!

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When I was in high school, one of the most popular kids shows on tv was Bananas in Pajamas.  The theme song was annoying and one of the worst earworms I've ever had.  

Here it is for your listening enjoyment.  I don't recommend it as a good storytime song, but you just have to experience if you haven't.  We did pajamas for storytime and encouraged pajama wearing (even though few kids took us up on that).

BOOKS:

We read Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney and Beep Beep Go to Sleep by Todd Tarpley, illustrated by John Rocco.

Both of these books are great, but I think that the kids like Llama Llama more than Beep Beep.  The parents, on the other hand, really liked Beep Beep.  I think next time that I do a pajama storytime I think I'll pick more sleep related books.  There really aren't that many books out there about pajamas. 

FINGERPLAY:

We did an adapted version of "Ten in the Bed" for our fingerplay this week: Five in the Bed.  My mom used to sing this one to me and my brother when we were little.

Ten in the bed (show ten fingers)
And the little one said
"Roll over!  Roll over!" (roll your hands)
So they all rolled over (roll you hands)
And one fell out (show one finger)

[Repeat with nine and so on]

SONG:

I knew in the back of my head that Sandra Boynton had songs to go along with her books, but I couldn't remember which ones until I stumbled across a recording of Pajama Time!  We got the shakers out and shook shook shook to this one!

CRAFT:

We decorated Llama Llama's red pajamas for him!  This was one of those happy process crafts that I love.  I had some leftover construction paper pieces that I put out with (DUH DUH DUHHHHHHHHHHH) safety scissors.  Kids cut the bigger pieces into littler pieces and glued them on the pajamas.  It was a good scissor activity and I talked about why using the scissor early is so important.  Here are my red pajamas.

Messy

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It's kind of spring here in Northern Minnesota.  I say kind of because it's only the beginning of March, and, while most of the snow has melted, there's no guarantee that it won't blizzard again before May.  So since everything's melting and snow is getting dirtier (we call it snirt here) and mud is making it's way out, it's the perfect time to do a messy storytime.

BOOKS:

We read Duck in the Truck by Jez Alborough and Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion, illustrated by Margaret Bloy Graham.

Full disclosure: I love Duck in the Truck.  I'll use any excuse I can get to read it.  So using Duck in the Truck, while not directly about messes, was a no brainer for me for this storytime.  I remember reading Harry the Dirty as a youth and thought that would be great for storytime.  It's a little long, but not too bad and the kids liked the story.  

FLANNELBOARD:

I used Scott's Dini Dinosaur flannel idea to make my own set of Dini Dinosaur flannels.  

We received our copy of DIni Dinosaur the day after my last storytime.  Next year, it'll be all Dini for messy storytime, but for this year, the flannels worked really well.

SONG: 

We jammed out to "Messes" by the Funky Mamas.  This was super fun.  I LOVE the violin in this song.  This is a great shaker song too.

CRAFT:

We did some non-messy fingerpainting.  I don't want to make mortal enemies of any of my storytime moms, so I tend to avoid the messiest of crafts or at least give them lots of warning.  We've done fingerpainting in bags before, but this gave the kids a little more freedom to create.  I got the paints out and gave each kid a piece of paper on a larger piece of tin foil.  They squeezed whatever paint on in whatever amount they wanted and then we covered it all up with saran wrap and they moved the paint around on the page to make cool designs.  When they were done painting, it was easy to just fold the tinfoil around the edges to make a little frame and it kept everything neat and tidy.


Shapes

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Since my storytime participants are skewing young, I decided to try out an easy theme: SHAPES.  Holy moly was this an awesome storytime.  The kids were engaged and participating and didn’t have wandering attentions.

BOOKS:

We read Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh and Color Zoo by Lois Ehlert.

Mouse Shapes was great to start with – it was swift, narrative and had some action to it.  I tried desperately to do three different high-squeaky mouse voices.  I don’t think I was successful as I would have liked, but oh, well.

In between stories, I put a bunch of different shapes on our flannel board.  The kids helped me name all the shapes and their colors and then I said I would use my imagination and create something out of all of the shapes.  They made this:

A robot!  Thanks to SLC Book Boy for the inspiration!

Color Zoo was less of a reading than an interactive play.  I named the animals and the kids helped me remember what each animal sounded like (except the fox, because, really, who does know what the fox says?) and we named the shapes together.  One little girl would yell the shapes and then jump up and down and clap after.  It was ADORABLE.

SONG:

I used “Where is Triangle?” from Storytime Katie’s blog.  It’s sung to the tune of “Where is Thumbkin?” or “Frere Jacques.”

Where is triangle?  Where is triangle?
Here I am!  Here I am!
How are you today, sir?  Very well, I thank you.
Run away.  Run away.

(Repeat with circle, rectangle, square, and diamond)

CRAFT:

I gave each child a piece of white paper and a bag of different shapes and let them loose.  They made monsters and dinosaurs and birds and dogs and snowmen and all kinds of stuff.  I love love love letting them do their own thing.

This is my dinosaur.  His name is Rufus.

This is my dinosaur.  His name is Rufus.

Recycling

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When I first started doing storytime on my own (in September – which is when I started this job), I had no idea how many crafts to prepare or color sheets to copy.  Most days, I still only guess and sometimes I’m right on and sometimes I’m way over.  Our cruddy cold weather hasn’t helped either.  I’ve canceled storytime at least once this winter.  ANYWAY, I almost always have leftover pieces from storytime and I decided a while ago to do a recycling storytime where we use up all of the leftover pieces for our craft.  The week has finally come.

BOOKS:

The Dumpster Diver by Janet s. Wong (illustrated by David Roberts) and Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback

The Dumpster Diver is cute, but doesn’t hold kids’ attention as well, probably because the story is narrated rather than just happening.  It violates that primary writing rule: Show, don’t tell.  The illustrations are wonderful, though, colorful and eyecatching -lots of detail to attend to.  Joseph Had a Little Overcoat worked well.  It was repetitive and the kids could guess what Joseph would make next out of his overcoat.  I really wanted an easy nonfiction book about recycling, but we don’t have any (yet).  [UPDATE: We just got Compost Stew in by Mary McKenna Siddals and that was PERFECT for this theme.]

SONG:

I was lucky enough to find Five Bottles of Juice on Mollie Kay’s What Happens in Storytime blog.  The song is easy and familiar so moms can sing along and the kids really like any of the flannelboards that we do together.

Five Bottles of Juice on the Wall (Sung to the tune of 99 bottles of Beer on the Wall)

Five bottles of juice on the wall
Five bottles of juice!
Put one in the recycling bin
Four bottles of juice on the wall

(Continue until none are left)

CRAFT:

This was such a successful craft.  I did do a demo ahead of time, just because I wanted the kiddos to have an idea of what they could do, but I wouldn’t even have needed it.

Here is both sides of the illustrious craft cart.  We did this Iron Chef style – I put all of the craft pieces on the cart and kids could come up and take what they wanted.  They repurposed things into other stuff and colored on everything.  I’m just amazed at how they immediately went to imaginative play land.  I have done some reading on different storytime blogs about process art vs. product art.  The best definition I found was from an article Katie Salo did for the ALSC blog:

Process art is when the emphasis is placed on making art and using different mediums whereas product art is when the emphasis is placed on following instructions to achieve an expected result.

For the past six months, I had been focused on product art, partially because that is what my predecessor had done and partially because I had never had a craft time in any of the storytimes I had done before.  I want to do more process art – and judging by the kids’ reactions, it’s a good idea.  It’s good for them to think outside of the box and to use their imaginations, but it’s also good for them to be able to do whatever they want (within limits) sometimes too.  I’ll post a gallery with samples of their artwork.

Drawing

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In my random wanderings through our easy fiction books, I found The Pencil by Allan Ahlberg.  I just loved it – the creation and destruction and whimsy and thought, “Man, I should do a storytime about drawing.”  Easier said than done.  But here is my valiant effort.

BOOKS:

We read Go to Bed, Monster! by Natasha Wing and The Pencil by Allan Ahlberg.

I really like The Pencil.  The kids liked guessing what was going to happen next and all the different (silly) names of the characters.  I did have a few babies my second day who really were talking up a storm until halfway through this book.  I need to work on my getting everybody’s attention stuff and waiting and doing other things to make sure everyone is attentive during the stories.  It isn’t a skill that I’ve honed yet (or really even practiced to tell you the truth).  Go to Bed, Monster is fun.  It’s quick and has action and I could definitely see moms who were sympathizing with Lucy as she tried to get Monster to go to bed.

SONG:

I lucked out on this one.  I had Sing and Read with Greg and Steve on my iPad and played Rainbow of Colors.  I also made BIG THINGS that were different colors and hung them around the room so when Greg and Steve sang, “Do you see something blue now?” the kids had to go stand by the something blue.  Here are my BIG THINGS:

Oh and we have green frogs on our bulletin board right now (one with each kid’s name for a unique count) and that’s the green thing they had to see.

CRAFT:

Our craft was a process craft.  I gave them crayons and a piece of white paper and had them draw their “masterpiece.”  Once they were all done, we framed them in fancy yellow construction paper frames so they could hang them up at home.  I did have one little girl who tried to glue hers to the wall…..luckily mom and I caught that one in time.

Here's my "masterpiece."