Penguins

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One of my coworkers is OBSESSED with penguins. I try to do a penguin storytime in the winter so she can find cool penguin crafts or color sheets for me.  There are a lot of penguin books I love, like Emperor's Egg by Martin Jenkins and Tacky by Helen Lester.  I picked two different books this time around and I'm not sure that the storytime overall was as successful.

BOOKS:

We read A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis and Penguin Problems by Jory John.  I started with Penguin Problems which I don't think I prefaced enough.  I think more dialogue before the story would have helped - "What problems do you think penguins have?  Are they like your problems?"  I only had one storytime this week because of a snow day, and my kids who come on Wednesday are pretty quiet.  A Penguin Story is awesome.  I really like it and it went over well.  I think that I would keep using Emperor's Egg and A Penguin Story for future penguin storytimes.

FLANNELBOARD:

Between stories, I used my penguin flannels from before and we sang a bathtime counting song.

1 little penguin going for a swim
Knock, knock, splash, splash
Come on in!

[Repeat up to five (or however many penguin flannels you have)]

SONG:

Sesame Street has some of the greatest songs of all time for kids.  I had found a Caspar Babypants song about penguins that was good, but then I listened to this one again (which I have used before) and the Caspar Babypants just can't compete.  "Doing the Penguin" is great because it has ACTIONS!  So many times when I put the music on and don't give kids a prop (shaker, scarf, bells, etc) they have no idea what to do with themselves.  I want to get them up and moving around so sometimes I'll make up my own dance moves (which amuses the parents to no end).  I do like songs that have actions built in though.  This is a great example of that.

CRAFT:

We made some penguin paper bag puppets.  I had a lot of options for crafts for penguins, but I was feeling like a paper bag puppet was in order.  We hadn't done one in a while and kids REALLY like making interactive crafts - things they can play with or use later on.  Here's one of my penguin puppets.