Ice and Skating

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This is a little bit of a crossover theme - we did talk about skating, but we also talked about ice, hockey, curling, and zambonis.  If you are unfamiliar with zambonis, I'm going to assume you grew up somewhere where hockey isn't a BIG DEAL.  Here's a picture of a zamboni for your reference.

Yes, the zamboni is the machine that cleans and levels the ice in an ice rink.  Kate and Jim McMullan, bless their hearts, wrote a whole book about the zamboni.

BOOKS:

We read I'm Cool by Kate and Jim McMullan and Bunnies on Ice by Johanna Wright.

These were both great books.  There are a few times in Bunnies on Ice where pausing to talk about the pictures made continuing with the text awkward, but it wasn't anything a little improvisation couldn't fix.  I'm Cool is a great book for me.  There are some voices.  There is a lot to talk about in the pictures, and it's all about something that's near and dear to my heart: The Zamboni.

ACTION SONG:

I found a winter song that's sung to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It" and tweaked the lyrics a bit to match my theme.

It's winter and it's time to lace our skates
It's winter and it's time to lace our skates
It's winter
That's the season!
We don't need a better erason
It's winter and it's time to lace our skates

Verse 2: It's winter and it's time to glide on ice.

Verse 3: It's winter and it's time to skate and leap!

SONG:

What kind of Ice and Skating storytime would this be if we didn't sing the zamboni song?  Here's "I Wanna Drive the Zamboni" by Martin Zellar.  This one is a little more laid back than the one we listened to in storytime.  We used our shakers with this one.  

CRAFT:

We made our own ice skates!  

These are something I found on Pinterest.  You put the template on half of a sheet of paper and then fold it and cut out the template as two, connected by the little white strips on the bottom.  You open them up, put the straws in, and glue the whole thing shut and color it.  They were lots of fun to make and the kids were zooming around the storytime room tables with their skates.