On Guest Stars in Storytime

Last week, I had a guest star at storytime.  She had recently self-published a very cute children’s book and wanted to read it and sell some copies.  She wanted to read at storytime and I agreed to do it, though, I am still not sure how I feel about guest stars.

I have had volunteers come in from time to time to do storytime when I’m not around (like next week, one of the days we have storytme, I’ll be at the Minnesota Library Association conference), but having guest stars is a different matter.  When I have a volunteer do storytime. usually that volunteer has been at one of my storytimes or has experience with small children.  And I’m NOT THERE.  Having a guest star means that not only am I there, but I’m endorsing that person or presenting them.  I’m more than happy to talk up a local author’s book or even bring it in to show it off, but I haven’t had the best experiences with having someone read their own work AT STORYTIME.  Reading out loud to children, especially toddlers, is a skill.  And not one that everyone has.  Not only that but my storytime has a routine – we talk a little about the topic of the day, we sing our introductory song, we read our books, and either sing another song or do a flannelboard, and then have craft time.  Usually our guest stars don’t know the routine, or aren’t interested and throwing out the routine throws off the kids.

I do love to see people excited about kids and books and reading, I think I will be gracefully declining any guest star requests in the future.  It feels a little selfish, but right now it’s what’s working for the kids.  I will keep thinking about this and try to integrate guests in different ways.

Yoga to move it move it

Full disclosure: this is probably the worst storytime I have ever had.  It is due to a million and a half reasons which I will disclose, but, that being said, I did learn a fair amount about storytiming and about toddlers vs. preschoolers.

I was mega excited to try this storytime theme.  I’ve toyed with the idea of doing a series of yoga storytimes a great deal and this was a chance to give it a try.

BOOKS:

We read From Head to Toe by Eric Carle and Move! by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page.

The books were a problem.  These are basically the same book.  If you’ve ever read them, you can tell – both books deal with animals moving in some way, shape, or form.  Carle’s introduces one animal movement and asks children if they can copy it and Jenkins’ and Page’s talks about the way animals move.  Silly me, I read the books and didn’t think much about how they would go together or how they would sound or feel read one right after the other.  Again, like I mentioned in my Thanksgiving post (and others), my storytime children enjoy traditionally narrative texts.  I switch it up periodically and give them something wild, but two non-traditionally plotted books don’t work for my storytime.  The kids were restless by the end of Move!  Super restless even with a movement activity between books.

ACTIVITY:

To start out with, we did a little warm-up.  We did some deep breathing, reaching up high, and touching our toes.  After From Head to Toe, we did a sun salutation.  I modeled each part of the pose and encouraged the kids to try with me and then we did the whole sequence twice along with “Dance for the Sun” by Kira Willey off her CD Dance for the Sun.  This worked out pretty well.  I didn’t have mats or towels for the kids and I think this threw them off a little.  Some of them wanted to be on my mat or next to me or they were in each other’s space a bit, but no one got hurt.  The song, which is so damn catchy, is great, BUT it has two long-ish sections at the beginning at the end where there’s just singing and no specific actions to go along with it.  I should have practiced more, we probably could have gotten at least four sun salutations in during the whole thing, but I didn’t.  So we ended up doing some aimless dancing at the beginning and end.

Here is my yoga mat.  I like to show it off because I think it’s sooooo pretty.

After we finished our sun salutations, we read Move! which did not capture anyone’s attention.  We did two balance poses after – Star and Shifting Star and tree pose.  I attempted to do a little shavasana with them after that, but NO WAY JOSE were they having that.  We got about 30 seconds through the song I had picked to listen to with them (“How to Be a Cloud” by Kira Willey) before they were up and moving around.  So I stopped the music.  This would have been a GREAT time to do a craft and distract them, but NOOOOO Miss Andrea decided that the movement would take up enough time so we wouldn’t have to do a craft.  Some of them colored, but some of them went out to play.  Overall, big fat mess.  The second day wasn’t nearly as bad; there were fewer children and more preschoolers.

Things I have learned:

• Yoga is easy.  Following directions is easy.  Unless you are between the ages of 2 and 3.  Then everything is difficult.  Preschoolers are more used to following directions (especially if they have had some sort of school setting experience).
• I need to choose books that not only work well together in theme, but also in writing style and reading style.  Two nearly similar books will not make for an attentive audience.
• Movement activities are GREAT, but for younger kids they need to be super structured and super simple.
• Diverging slightly from the usual format is a-okay, but there has to be still some familiar things.  Singing our opening song is one of them.  Doing a craft at the end if we aren’t reading two books and singing a song or two is another.

I hope that these help you, Reader.  My failure should equal your hardy success!  :D  In the meantime, I’ll work on tweaking storytimes and trying to add in more movement activities.