Love 😍

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I've covered Valentine's Day in years past, but this year I'm trying to get away from holidays.  I did decide that love would be a suitable topic for storytime this week since we love our friends and our families.

BOOKS:

We read Bloom: A Little Book About Finding Love by Maria Lieshout and My Love for You by Susan Roth.  

These were great for my storytime tots.  My crowd is skewing younger so these are shorter books with great pictures.  My Love For You is about a mother's love for her baby (with BONUS COUNTING!) and Bloom is about a little pig who thinks she's in love with a butterfly, but finds that her friend truly knows her best and has her back.  Neither are heart-stoppingly awesome, but they are cute.

SONG:

We did two songs this week.  I sang this one and accompanied myself with the ukulele.

The lovely Jbrary ladies have the melody and words for you and if you're looking for the ukulele chords, you can find them here at Storytime Ukulele.

SONG:

We listened and acted along to Laurie Berkner's "There's a Little Wheel A'Turning in my Heart."

The songs that go over the best really are the ones with actions to go along with them.  Also just FYI all Laurie Berkner songs are terrible terrible earworms.  I guarantee you'll have this one stuck in your head for DAYS.

CRAFT:

I found this gorgeous and easy craft on Pinterest.  We made love trees from a cutout of MY hand.  Which made it a huge tree since I have overly large hands.

Valentine's Day!

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It’s that time again – hearts and pink and white and red!  Valentine’s still is one of my least favorite holiday but it’s all about candy with kids, you know?  So I went traditionally this year and read two Valentine’s stories and we did a heart-shaped craft.  I might have to switch up it next year though.

BOOKS:

Love, Ruby Valentine by Laurie Friedman (illustrated by Lynne Avril Cravath) and Froggy’s First Kiss by Jonathan London (illustrated by Frank Remkiewicz)

Froggy was (as usual) a crowd favorite.  It has sound effects (BONK!), voices (Miss Witherspoon’s FROOOOOOOGGY!) and general goofiness.  Ruby Valentine was okay – it was a little long and it didn’t scan quite perfectly so there were a few parts that I had trouble wrapping my mouth around.  

FLANNELBOARD: 

I chose to use SLC Book Boy’s Never too Little to Love flannel set for storytime this week.  We talked about how Timmy too Tiny wanted to give the Cat in the Hat a kiss, but he was WAY at the top of the board.  Each child took a different pieces and used it to help Timmy climb to the top of the board.  BUT! Oh no!  When he got to the top, all of the pieces fell down, but the cat jumped down to give Timmy a kiss any way.

The cabbage and the tea cup were my favorite parts of this set.  

CRAFT:

Our craft for the day was heart suncatchers.  I cut out a bajillion tissue paper hearts of various sizes and colors and circles  out of contact paper and construction paper.   This craft was SO easy and kids really liked sticking the hearts to the contact paper.  PLUS EXTRA BONUS! Good fine motor skill activity!