Counting

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As we get back into the rhythm of in person storytime, it’s always good to start with the basics. I LOVE to do counting stuff in storytime - forwards, backwards, using math words so this was fun for me.

BOOKS:

We read Count the Monkeys by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Kevin Cornell and One-osaurus, Two-osaurus by Kim Norman, illustrated by Pierre Collet-Derby.

I love Count the Monkeys. It’s goofy and interactive and fun and a great way to start getting some interaction with the new storytime kids. One-osaurus, Two-osaurus is also cute and there’s lot of opportunities for dialogic reading.

ACTION SONG:

We sang “The Counting Pokey” and “Five Green and Speckled Frogs.”

The Counting Pokey
Sung to the tune of “The Hokey Pokey”

You put one foot up
You put one foot down
You put one foot up and you shake it all around
You do the counting pokey and turn yourself around
That’s how you learn to count!

2. You put two hands up

3. You put three fingers up

Five Green and Speckled Frogs

Five green and speckled frogs
Sitting on a speckled log
Eating some most delicious bugs
Yum! Yum!
One jumped into the pool
Where it is nice and cool
Then there were four green speckled frogs

[Repeat with descending numbers of frogs]

I have this little prop to go along with “Five Green and Speckled Frogs.” It’s one of the first props I made when I started doing storytime here and I love that I can still use it.

hand holding a paper towel tube with four green frogs glued to brown paper on the top of the tube and one brown paper ring is flipped down to show water.

DANCE BREAK:

For our dance break, we listened to “High Five” by They Might Be Giants.

Cooking

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Our Cooking storytime was hot hot hot! :D

BOOKS:

We read Our Little Kitchen by Jillian Tamaki, Is That Wise, Pig? by Jan Thomas, and It Happened on Sweet Street by Caroline Adderson, illustrated by Stephane Jorisch.

This was a virtual stortyime, so I don’t have any audience reactions to the stories. I love the intricacy and details of Our Little Kitchen and both Is That Wise, Pig? and It Happened on Sweet Street are clever and funny. I did make this chef hat to wear during storytime and repurposed my lab coat to be a chef coat.

SONGS:

We did the call and response song “I Am Hungry” which I picked up from Jbrary. Yes, that did involve me repeating myself while pointing to the camera to indicate that the audience should join in with me. The things we do for virtual storytimes.

“I Am Hungry”
To the tune of “Frere Jacques”

I am hungry (I am hungry)
What should I eat? (What should I eat?)
Think I'll have some pizza (think I'll have some pizza)
Without any meat! (Without any meat).

I am hungry! (I am hungry)
What should I eat? (What should I eat?)
Think I'll have tomato soup (think I'll have tomato soup)
With lots of heat! (With lots of heat).

I am hungry! (I am hungry)
What should I eat? (What should I eat?)
Think I'll have some ice cream (think I'll have some ice cream)
Cold and sweet! (Cold and sweet).

I also grabbed some vegetables from kitchen along with a big stock pot to do the prop song “Stir, Stir, Stir the Soup” from the Pasadena Library.

“Stir, Stir, Stir the Soup”
To the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”

Stir, stir, stir the soup
Stir it all day long.
Add some (insert food name here),
Take a taste (slurrrp!)
Soup will make us strong. (flex arm)

I added carrots, onion, potato, and celery. One of my storytime moms commented that her son would have added sugar to the soup! :D Those are the interactions I miss.

CRAFTS:

Some craft ideas for this storytime: a simpler chef hat with strips of paper stapled together or even a chef himself!

DANCE BREAK: Our dance break song this week was the Cookie Monster classic “C is for Cookie!

Letter A - 2021

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Hi all, long time, no blogging…..Good news for you! I’m back (at least for a bit) with some new storytime themes and plans for you. First up: Letter A. We’re going back through the alphabet. I think alphabet themes are great because you can read any story that has something to do with your letter. It’s freer than a stricter theme like “Bears” or “Swimming.”

BOOKS:

We read If You Ever Want to Bring an Alligator to School, Don’t! by Elise Parsley, Armadilly Chili by Helen Ketteman, illustrated by Will Terry, and Airplanes by Byron Barton.

This is one of my virtual storytimes (which are recorded) so I don’t have any feedback on how the books were received. I really enjoyed Armadilly Chili and thought it was a fun twist on the Little Red Hen story.

RHYMES:

I found these fun rhymes on Storytime Katie (bless her heart and her website).

“Alphabet Beat”

First clap your hands. Then stomp your feet.
Everybody do the alphabet beat.
Apple, Apple, Apple – a – a – a,
Apple, Apple, Apple – a – a – a,
Wave your arms high. Swing your arms low.
The alphabet beat is the way to go.
Blue, Blue, Blue – b – b – b
Blue, Blue, Blue – b – b – b
Move to the left. Move to the right.
The alphabet beat is way out of sight.
Car, Car, Car – c – c – c
Car, Car, Car – c – c – c
Now give a high five to a nearby friend.
The alphabet beat has come to the end!

So I clapped the first three beats in each line and then stomped out the rest. I had a great time doing this and it would be lots of fun with littles all standing up.

“Way Up High In the Apple Tree”

Way up high in the apple tree (stretch arm up high)
Two red apples smiled at me (hold up 2 fingers)
I shook that tree as hard as I could (make a shaking motion)
Down came the apples, (make a downward motion)
Mmmm–were they good! (smile and rub stomach)

I busted out my red shakers for this one and just held them in my hands like apples during this rhyme.

CRAFT SUGGESTIONS:

Since storytime is virtual, I don’t have a craft ready to go, but I can definitely think of some awesome ones.

alligator and apple prints.png

We did these A alligators the last time I did an alphabet storytime series. We’ve done apple prints which are super fun and appropriately messy. I have done other alligator crafts that I love - one with printed scales (glue foam pieces that are scale shaped onto a piece of cardboard, have the kids paint it and then print it onto the alligator) and one with a paper chain body that turned out really awesome but was a bit of a pain for the littles to make the small paper chains. (The first image is mine, the second is what my craft looked like but the image is from Instructables.)

alligator crafts.png

DANCE BREAK SONG:

I’ve been including links to dance break videos in the description of my virtual storytimes since we used to do a dance at the end of every storytime. This week’s video was the classic “Aikendrum” by Raffi.

Swimming

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The pool is finally open here and I’m itching to go for a swim.

BOOKS:

We read Abigail the Whale by Davide Cali and Sonja Bougaeva, and Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall.

This was an interesting pairing of books. Both books deal with water/swimming insecurities but in very different ways. The kids loved the big splashes at the end of both books. Abigail was a good opportunity to talk about being mean and what is okay and what is not okay to say. Jabari helped us talk about feelings - especially when you’re scared, but you might not want to admit it.

SONG:

We sang “If You’re Going to the Pool” to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” I found this via Storytime Katie.

“If You’re Going to the Pool”
Sung to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It”

If you’re going to the pool, wear your suit,
If you’re going to the pool, wear your suit,
If you’re going to the pool, then a suit will keep you cool
If you’re going to the pool, wear your suit.
(Additional verses: hat, flip flops, sunglasses)

I did the first verse with the kids and then had them think of what else we needed to bring to the pool. They brought googles, towels, sunglasses, even sunscreen!

SONG:

After both books and our in between activity, we grooved out to “The Deep End” by Recess Monkey with our rhythm sticks.

CRAFT:

Our craft was an articulated swimmer!

Yes, this craft was a bit fiddly, but I really really really had this in my head and thought it would be fun. I like the way the final product turned out, but I’m not sure if the kids enjoyed it as much as I did.

MUD

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We had some good clean fun with messes and mud in storytime this week.

BOOKS: 

We read Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion and The Pigeon Needs a Bath by Mo Willems.

Pigeon went over a little better than Harry, though my preschool kids did really enjoy Harry and predicting what would happen to him.

FLANNELBOARD:

A few years ago I made a Dini Dinosaur flannelboard that I reused for this storytime!

Once I explained how it would work (basically by showing an example and asking questions right away), the kids loved it.  They liked telling him what piece of clothing he had to take off to get clean and scolding him: "Silly Dini Dinosaur! Don't you know?!"

SONG:

We used our shakers and pretended to clean up as we listened to "Oh My Goodness, Look at This Mess!" by Sweet Honey in the Rock.  LOVE this song.

CRAFT:

For our craft, we glued pigs to a piece of construction paper and gave them a mud bath!  I prepared the mud using coffee grounds, water, and a little bit of brown tempera paint.  It was fast, quick, relatively clean, and satisfied everyone.

You rock, Rock!

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This week I delved into new territory: ROCKS.  We have a couple of really great rock books, one in particular that has checked out a ton, so I went forward.

BOOKS:

We read Rhoda's Rock Hunt by Molly Beth Griffin and Charlotte and the Rock by Stephen Martin.  

Rhoda's Rock Hunt is a little long, but there are lots of opportunities for interaction throughout.  I can also see this working well as a touch and see storytime - bring in different rocks like those Rhoda describes for participants to see and touch as you read.  Charlotte and the Rock is short and delightful, a wonderful storytime read.  Not to mention Samantha Cotterill's illustrations are beautiful.

SONG:

I got out all of my instruments and we played along with my ukulele and sang "Big Rock Candy Mountain."  I had to think REALLY hard about this one because I used the Okee Dokee Brothers' lyrics rather than the folksy original lyrics about cigarette trees and little streams of alkey-hool. Here's the Okee Dokee Brothers version:

SONG:

We also listened to "My Pet Rock" by Recess Monkey.  The kids got another chance to try out a different instrument while we listened to this one.

CRAFT:

In storytime, we painted rocks using tempera paint.   I did prepare a different activity for my storytime kit, since it's difficult to send paint home easily.  I provided a sheet of rock explorations that parents and children can do together.  

Rock Exploration

  • Look at your rocks.  Are they hard or soft?  Smooth or rough?  Heavy or light?  What do you notice about your rocks?  Are they sparkly or dull?
  • Spray your rocks with water.  Does it change how the rocks looks?
  • Scratch your rocks on the black and white construction paper.  Do the rocks make marks on the paper?
  • Weigh them using a bathroom or kitchen scale.
  • Scratch your rocks against each other – Harder rocks will leave a mark on a softer rock.
  • Ask a grown-up to help you drip vinegar on your rocks.  If the vinegar fizzes, your rock is made of chalk marble or limestone.
  • Decorate your rock – use paint, crayons, or markers, to decorate your rock.

Houses

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In retrospect, it seems silly to do a storytime just about houses and not HOMES, but that's what I did.  I will definitely change this around a bit if I decide to redo it and use some stories about apartments and trailer homes too.

BOOKS:

We read The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson and The Napping House by Audrey & Don Wood.

The House in the Night didn't work as well as I had hoped.  With some practice reading the pictures out loud, it could work fairly well, but it isn't a match for The Napping House, my tried and true favorite.

FINGERPLAY:

For our between-the-stories activity, we did "Here is a House."

Here is a house build up high (hands over head to make a roof)
With two big chimneys reaching for the sky (raise arms up high)
Here is a window (draw a square with your hands)
Here is a door (pretend to open door)
If we look inside (pretend to look inside)
There’s a mouse on the floor! (scamper fingers away)

SONG:

We listened to "Rooms" by Tim Kubart.

CRAFT:

I was inspired by Storytime Katie's paperbag houses so we made our own. I love how they turned out and the kids liked adding all the windows and doors.

Stuffed Animals

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I've done a stuffed animal sleepover for a few years, but never attempted the accompanying storytime.  Usually kids trickle in to drop off and pick up and that works for us.  I had randomly picked toys as a storytime theme, but couldn't really find any compelling books to fit, and then had the epiphany, "STUFFED ANIMALS!"  I invited all the grown-ups and children to bring their own stuffed animals from home for this special storytime.

BOOKS:

We read Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems because OF COURSE WE DID and I Don't Like Koala by Sean Ferrell.

Both of these were surprisingly good storytime books.  Knuffle Bunny is good because it's Mo Willems and properly set up can help kids learn about context clues and foreshadowing.  I Don't Like Koala needed a little more set-up and in text talking than I did properly the first time.  We talked about Koala and whether or not the kids liked him and at the end we talked about scary rooms and the dark and being scared in the dark, which helped explain why Koala ended up being good.

ACTION RHYME:

We did "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear" which I don't think I knew all of until this storytime.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, reach up high
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, wink one eye
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, slap your knees
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, sit down please.

SONG: 

Honestly, I found a really terrible stuffed animal song that we listened to on the first day for a bit before I turned it off.  On the second day, we just listened "The Robot Dance" by The Pop-Ups.  So much better.

CRAFT:

I am super excited to show you this one.  We made our own stuffed KNUFFLE BUNNIES!

Stuffing the bunnies was fun (but required a lot of grown-up help to staple).  The kids were super happy with the end product.  

Spring is in the Air!

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Even though the Spring Equinox was right around the corner, it was still really bloody cold here in Northern Minnesota.  Nevertheless, we plowed through a spring storytime because sometimes when all you've seen is gray all day (the skies are gray, the buildings are grey, the sidewalks are gray, the snow is now gray - aka snirt), you need a little hope that the grass will be green again and flowers will bloom again and the sun is still up there behind the endless curtains of clouds.

BOOKS:

We read Bear Wants More by Karma Wilson and When Spring Comes by Kevin Henkes.

These are both so cute.  We counted up all of the food that Bear ate in Bear Wants More.  This would have been fun with a flannel accompaniment of all the different things he ate.  I like When Spring Comes though it's a little more abstract than Bear, it still has excellent pictures and beautiful text.  

FINGERPLAY:

Our in-between-the-books fingerplay was probably my favorite part of this storytime.  We did "Here is a bunny" that I borrowed from Storytime Katie.

Here is a bunny with ears so funny          hold up index and middle fingers for ears
And here is his hole in the ground           make a circle with other hand
At the first sound he hears,
he pricks up his ears                                 extend two fingers straight
And hops in this hole in the ground         fingers jump into the hole

SONG:

For our song and dance, we listened to "Walking with Spring" by the Okee Dokee Brothers.  We got out our shakers and shook away to it too.

CRAFT:

I wanted to do something big and colorful for this so we made flowers out of paper scraps and paper plates.  The original Pinterest post had the kids decorate their paper plates with bingo daubers and if I had had any or had had the time to find any I totally would have gone with that instead of markers.  I also wanted big leaves for the stems but ran our of time to make them.  Oh well, NEXT TIME. :D

Dance Dance Revolution

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We like to move it, move it here at the library so I thought a dance storytime was in order.  We hop, leaped, and twirled our hearts out!

BOOKS:

We read Dance Dance Underpants! by Bob Shea and I Got the Rhythm by Connie Schofield-Morrison.

These were both really good for storytime.  I was a little worried because Ballet Cat is a little long at times, but it's so funny that the kids didn't mind.  I stopped from time to time to ask questions - like do you think that Butter Bear wants to do really high leaps? How can you tell?  and so on.  I Got the Rhythm worked well because it's almost a call and response kind of book.  We would shake our hips and clap and snap along with the narrator.

ACTION SONG:

For our in-between books activity, we did the hokey-pokey.  Simple as that.  

SONG:

For our song this week, we listened (and danced) to "Dance with Me" by the Not-Its!  I love this song.  It's so catchy.  I previewed the steps before we listened and then we went to it.

CRAFT:

Normally, I would have done dance ribbons with this theme, but we made them not too terribly long ago, so I went in a different direct.  We made our own rhythm sticks out of paint stir sticks and painted them with watercolors.  I like the watercolors because they soaked into the light wood quickly so there was little dry time, but still good color.  The kids were excited because we've used my rhythm sticks several times in storytime. Here are mine.

BUGS!

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Bugs was a super fun storytime theme.   All of my storytime kids are too little (or don't know any better) to get grossed out by bugs I think so we all enjoyed this.

BOOKS:

We read I Love Bugs by Emma Dodd and Can You Make a Scary Face? by Jan Thomas.

Both of these are fantastic storytime reads.  I feel like Emma Dodd can do no wrong and following that up with the action-filled wonder of Can You Make a Scary Face? was perfect.  

FLANNELBOARD:

I borrowed this idea from Miss Mary Liberry and made it my own.  The lyrics go a little like this:

5 hungry ants,
marching in a line,
came upon a picnic
where they could dine.
They marched into the salad,
they marched into the cake,
they marched into the pepper….
Uh oh, that was a mistake!
AHHHH-CHOOO!

You can count down and have one sneeze and fly off one at a time, but I chose to make all of my ants fly off the board at once and you'll see why.

I made my ants out of pom poms and pipe cleaners!  So I perched them on the top of my flannelboard and then popped them off by giving my flannelboard a little jerk. So fun!  Here's a close up of an ant.

CRAFT:

We made our own Very Hungry Caterpillars.  It was a little more complicated than most of the crafts we've been doing lately, but overall it paid off because the kids LOVE the VHC.  Here's mine.

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.

Boats Afloat

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In my random picking of storytime themes, I hit a goldmine with boats.  Much fun had by all.

BOOKS:

We read Mr. Gumpy's Outing by John Burningham and Boats Afloat by Shelley Rotner.

I wasn't sure how either of these would go over, but they were great.  My crowd has been mostly toddlers lately so the simpler stories seem to work better for us.  Mr. Gumpy's Outing is fun for multiple reasons - all of the animals whose noises we can make, the inevitable bad thing that will happen, the simple illustrations.  Boats Afloat is a very simple nonfiction title about boats.  I didn't read the whole thing - clipped a few pages for length - but we were able to talk about the function of different boats and the kids found out that they had been in more boats than they thought.

ACTION SONG:

We sang the perennial classic "Row Row Row Your Boat" with some alternate lyrics!

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
If a frog jumps in your boat
Don't forget to scream! AHHH!!!!

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Ha! Ha! Fooled you!
I'm a submarine!

The last verse was courtesy of a little girl in Tuesday's storytime who politely told me that she knew a DIFFERENT verse than I had sang.  So she sang it, then we all sang it together.  It was DELIGHTFUL.

SONG:

I really like the Okee Dokee Brothers and just don't have enough opportunities to use their music in storytime.  I was overjoyed to be able to use "Can You Canoe?" this week.

CRAFT:

Pinterest is wonderful.  I found this no glue, no cutting, no coloring, no painting craft there.  Next time, if I do this again, I would set up some containers with water so they could all test out their sailboats.  I cut up one pool noodle and had more than enough boats for everyone.  Here's my sturdy craft afloat in some slightly murky tap water.

QUACK!

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Looking through my own files while planning storytime themes for the spring, I realized that I had never done a duck storytime.  I'm actually really shocked because Duck in the Truck is probably one of my favorite books to read out loud EVER.  So without further ado - DUCKS: the storytime.

BOOKS:

We read Duck in the Truck  by Jez Alborough and Duck at the Door by Jackie Urbanovic.

Both of these are wonderful storytime books.  Duck in the Truck is fun because of the rhyming, the illustrations and al of the different animals.  Duck at the Door has some wonderful tongue-in-cheek humor for parents in the illustrations and the whole idea of a duck who skips migration to hang out in a house is fun to explore.  

FINGERPLAY:

We sang and acted out "5 Little Ducks."  This just brings me back to my childhood.  :D

5 little ducks that I once knew
Fat ones, skinny ones, fair ones too
But the one little duck with the feather on his back
He led the others with a: Quack, quack, quack!  
Quack, quack, quack! Quack, quack, quack!
He led the others with a quack, quack, quack!

SONG:

What kind of duck storytime do you think this would be without RUBBER DUCKIES!?

CRAFT: 

We made duck fingerpuppets!  The original post that I saw on Pinterest had the wings of the ducks made out of green muffin papers, but I was too lazy and too cheap to go out and get some of those so we used feathers instead and I think they turned out even cuter with the feathers.

The Beach (AKA trying to think warm during winter)

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It's cold in Minnesota in the winter.  (If you live here or Up North, I know you're thinking DUH!  If you're not from around here, you have no idea what I mean by cold.)  After a straight week of below zero temperatures (with -20+ windchills), I decided that we couldn't keep doing storytimes about cold things (read penguins, snow, winter, etc.), so I scheduled one about BEACHES.  (No, not the tear-inducing movie, those places by lakes or oceans)

BOOKS:

We read To the Beach by Linda Ashman and Surf's Up! by Kwame Alexander.

Both of this worked...SWIMMINGLY! (I slay myself!)  To the Beach was fun because we could talk about prediction - after the second or third time going back home, I asked if the kids thought the family would EVER get to the beach.  (Most said no, btw.)  We also talked about rhyming words and phonemic awareness.  I wasn't sure if Surf's Up would work.  I haven't had a good track record with books that are only dialogue.  This worked well though.  I think because there were only two voices, the text was in two different colors (which I could've pointed out as a text awareness piece, but didn't think of until now), and the characters were pretty distinct.  I had a good Surfer Dude voice going and then just my normal voice.  It's a great book. I like it way more than I thought I would.

ACTION SONG:

I borrowed "The Sea" from Storytime Katie's Beach storytime.  I like that this can be a gross motor skill activity.  We did a lot of moving and grooving to this song.  With waves, we raised our arms up high in the air and then bent and brought them down to the ground.  For sharks, we used our whole arms to make shark jaws and clapped our hands together to make the snaps.  For fish, we put our hands together and swished them back and forth.  And for boats, we just pulled on our horn to toot it. 

The Sea
(To the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus")

The waves on the sea go up and down
Up and down, up and down
The waves on the sea go up and down
All day long!

2nd verse: The shark in the sea goes snap, snap snap!

3rd verse: The fish in the sea go swish, swish, swish

4th verse: The boats on the sea go toot, toot, toot.

SONG:

I love the jazzy upbeat storytime songs.  This would've went well with shakers, but instead we practiced jumping, swimming forward and backward, and diving!  Wonderful fun.

CRAFT:

I've seen a million and a half of these make-shapes-and-animals-out-of-handprints crafts but I've never actually done one in storytime.  Partly because paint is always iffy with parents (and don't get me started on washable paint - IT NEVER LOOKS LIKE REGULAR PAINT JUST REDDISH GOO) and because painting on oneself is never usually a good idea.  In lieu of a better idea, I decided to try one out and it worked pretty spectacularly.  We made these crabs.

This is mine, as you can tell, because it's ginormous like my huge man hands.

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.

Snow!

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Hilariously enough, I scheduled this theme for last week AND we had a blizzard and had to cancel both days of storytime.  So we moved it to this week and it's bitterly cold, BUT we were still open and had people show up.  

BOOKS:

We read The Mitten by Jan Brett and Snow by Uri Shulevitz. 

Both of these were wonderful.  I just love love love The Mitten.  I saw someone on the Storytime Underground Facebook page who had put a masking tape outline of a big mitten on their storytime room carpet and as they progressed through the story, they had more kids going into the mitten outline until they were all crammed in like the animals in the book.  So I did that and at first, it was difficult to get kids to be brave enough to go in there, but once they did, they were giggling and having a blast.  Fabulous idea!  Snow is nice.  It was a good winding everyone down book.  It would be a nice bedtime story book.

FLANNELBOARD:

I borrowed "Five Little Snowflakes" from Storytime Katie.  It is so fun.  Here are my snowflakes:

And here is the rhyme to go with them:

One little snowflake with nothing to do.
Along came another and
Then there were two.

Two little snowflakes laughing with me.
Along came another and
Then there were three.

Three little snowflakes looking for some more.
Along came another and
Then there were four.

Four little snowflakes dancing a jive.
Along came another and
Then there were five.

Five little snowflakes having so much fun.
Out came the sun and
Then there were none!

At the last verse, I swept my arm over the flannelboard and scooped up all the snowflakes so they "disappeared."

SONG:

We shook our shakers along with "Winter Party" by Caspar Babypants.  He's not always my favorite baby musician, but I do like this song.

CRAFT:

The majority of kids I'm getting these days are toddlers - three and up - so I've tried really hard to tailor my crafts to fit the skills that those kids have AND need to develop.  So we made simple snowflakes using blue paper strips and painting white glitter dots on them using qtips.  All about those fine motor skills.  Here is one of mine!

Clothing

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I ditched the Thanksgiving theme this year because blegh holidays and we don't have any good Thanksgiving books anyway.  So after I wrestled with the idea of music and night time, I finally settled on clothing and what a storytime it was!

BOOKS:

We read Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed by Mo Willems and Ella Sarah Gets Dressed by Margaret Chodos-Irvine.

Both of these are wonderful.  The kids liked Ella Sarah a little more I think, but the adults appreciated Willems' humor.  I liked that we could talk about different items of clothing with each story - and items of clothing we might not usually talk about like suits and top hats and all that. 

ACTION RHYME:

I borrowed this action rhyme from Storytime Katie.  The stomping, let me tell you what.  The stomping is the best.

Old shoes, new shoes
[insert child's name] is wearing [description] shoes.
1, 2, 3, 4, now I stomp them on the floor!

So I got to talk to most of the kids and ask them what kind of shoes they were wearing or how they would describe their shoes and we would chant our little rhyme again and stomp our feet. 

SONG:

We listened and danced and did all kinds of goofy stuff to "Bring Your Clothes" by Laurie Berkner.  I made sure to preface this one by saying we're going to PRETEND that we ARE our clothes.  That helped them understand the actions we did.

CRAFT:

I went super simple for this one.  We just matched up the different clothing with its shape and letters and then glued it down.  We've had a lot of toddlers at storytime lately so I've been trying to go simpler on the crafts for the kids and for the moms.  

My Imagination!

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I have been struggling a bit to come up with themes for storytime (I need to do more without themes, I realize). But imagination fell into my lap and I just rolled with it.  Kids get really excited about using their imagination.  When do grown-ups lose that?  We need more imagination in our lives.

BOOKS:

We read It's an Orange Aardvark! by Michael Hall and Not a Stick by Antoinette Portis.  I love love love these books so much.  It's an Orange Aardvark! is a great way to introduce parents to dialogic reading.  (Actually now that I think about it, both of them are.)  The carpenter ants repeat the color they see and then add a further descriptor.  "It's green!  Green like the grass!"  Just brilliant.  With Not a Stick, one could ask questions about the pictures.  If it isn't a stick, what is it in this picture?  What else do you see?  My storytime is skewing younger again so these were short, to the point, and were great for pre-preschoolers and toddlers.

ACTION SONG:

I couldn't think of a good song for imagination, so I thought we'd just PRETEND we were in an elevator and sing The Elevator Song.  (Seriously, this theme is pure gold, children's librarians, just whatever you want to do, you just have to PRETEND.)  If you don't know the Elevator Song, stop what you're doing immediately and watch this video.  The Elevator Song is one of my all time favorite songs to sing with kids.  And adults from time to time.

SONG:

Our dancing/singing song at the end of storytime this week was BOTH "Dinosaur Stomp" by Koo Koo Kangaroo and "Robot Dance" by the Pop-Ups.  On Tuesday, "Robot Dance" wasn't working on my tablet, so we did the "Dinosaur Stomp."  Here are both videos for your listening enjoyment.

CRAFT:

I knew I wanted to do some sort of process craft with this theme, and I found this on one of those 50 Process Crafts to do with Your Kid things on Pinterest and thought, hey, old library cards would be perfect for this!

We painted using plastic cards as our paint brushes.  It was interesting.  Most of the kids liked it after they got over the initial weirdness of no brushes.  I just love the way the art turned out.  It's bright and brilliant and the paint has such a different look and texture than it would if you used a regular paintbrush.

Unloved Animals

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I don't know about YOUR library staff, but my library staff can frequently be found squeeing over pictures of tiny cute animals on the internet.  We love us some tiny cute animals.  This made me think about OTHER animals.  What about the weird looking ones?  (We also just got Pink is for Blobfish by Jess Keating) I dug around and found enough stuff for an Unloved Animals storytime.

BOOKS:

We read Aaaarrgggh! Spider by Lydia Monks and Vulture View by April Pulley Sayre.

I really like Aaaarrgghh! Spider.  It's so fun.  The kids also LOVE the random yelling of AAAAHHHH!!!! SPIDER!  Vulture View really is the absolute perfect book for this theme.  It's about vultures (not generally everyone's favorite animal) and the text is beautiful and simple.  And I can't say enough good about Steve Jenkins' illustrations.  Actual Size is definitely one of my favorite nonfiction picture books.

FINGERPLAY:

I brought back the oldie, but goodie, "I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee."  The moms really got a kick out of this one because they knew the song.  It's not a proper song, but it's funny and silly and brings you back to the time when you thought all things should be fun and silly.

I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee
Won't my mommy be so proud of me?
I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee
OUCH! it stung me!

I'm squishing up my baby bumblebee
Won't my mommy be so proud of me?
I'm squishing up my baby bumblebee
EW! It's all over me!

I'm wiping off my baby bumblebee
Won't my mommy be so proud of me?
I'm wiping off my baby bumblebee
BYE-BYE baby bumblebee!

SONG:

We listened to Moose on the Loose by Ozomatli.  HOLY COW THIS SONG IS AWESOME!

CRAFT:

We made our own vultures!  This is a really terrible picture of my vulture - I took the board down before I could get a good one.  They were a nice easy craft.