I feel sooooo..........
/This week we read books about FEELINGS! I thought this was a very successful storytime. The kids who have been coming in for storytime have been more like toddlers than preschoolers so I’ve been trying to gear my books to match the participants. This was the first week that I felt like I really hit it out of the park.
BOOKS:
Grumpy Bird by Jeremy Tankard and My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss
Both of these books were relatively short, but still lent themselves to an expressive retelling. Grumpy Bird gets to say some GREAT lines and My Many Colored Days is lyrical in only the way a Dr. Seuss book can be.
SONG (AND STUFF):
Before we sang a song (obviously we sang and listened to “If You’re Happy and You Know It”), we took some time to think about how different things make us feel. I saw this idea on Falling Flannelboards and knew it would be perfect for this storyime.
I put up the Happy and Sad flannels and then we sorted each item into a category (Saraj Ghoting told me that sorting was MATH at a PLA session so yeah, WE DID MATH IN STORYTIME). I tried very hard not to do vocal cues when describing the items so the kids could decide on their own and they did really well. And after that we clapped our hands, stomped our feet, wiggled our ears, and shouted HOORAY because we were so happy.
CRAFT:
This one wasn’t too inspired, but kids ALWAYS like things that they can play with or turn around or put their hands into. So we made these feelings half-masks. They can use them to show that they are happy or sad. Not too original, but lots of gluing (which seems to be a thing with kids – me, personally, I’d rather color or paint or something, but they really like using glue sticks).