We've Got Magic to Do!

Do you ever have those weeks where you just feel like you have no storytime mojo?  That was NOT this week for me.  I had ALL of the storytime mojo (sorry if I was hogging it).  The theme was magic and that is what I did.  I had enraptured children, amused adults, and all around fabulousness!

BOOKS:

We read in this order (very important): Sausages by Jessica Souhami and Anton Can Do Magic by Ole Könnecke.

I loved both of these books.  Sausages was clever and funny.  The kids thought it was hilarious when the man got the sausages stuck to the end of his nose.  I love the cut-paper and pencil illustrations.  They were simple, but gorgeous.  Anton Can Do Magic was short and the kids could tell that Anton wasn’t really doing magic – this would be a great one-on-one read aloud for a young child and his parent/guardian.  Anton also lead well into our next activity because of Anton’s magic hat.

FINGERPLAY:

Between the two stories, we used the Magic Finger fingerplay to keep our attention.  I found this via Storytime Katie.

Magic finger in the air!
Magic finger in my hair!
Magic finger on my hip!
Magic finger on my lips!

ACTIVITY:

After Anton Can Do Magic, I pulled out my magic hat (okay, not really a magic hat, just one of the random hats I had in my closet) and told the kids I was going to pull a rabbit out of it.  I bought a set of 10 or so animal finger puppets at Ikea the last time I was there.  I threw four or five of them in the hat with the rabbit one BEFORE hand.  I said the magic words:

Magic, magic in my hat,
I can pull out a rabbit……….
ACK! What’s that?

So when I said ACK! I pulled out a different animal puppet and the kids named them.  Finally I got the rabbit.  They ATE it up.  It was soooo great.  I found this from Scott at Walls Became the World.

CRAFT:

Our craft was almost stupifyingly simple this week.  We made rabbits that pop out of hats!

The children had to glue the bunny to the popsicle stick and draw his face and that was it for the craft.  Then we cleaned up while we waited for the glue to dry and PRESTO! we played with our rabbits!

I had cut a slit into each hat so the bunny could pop through.  Another craft that is also interactive.