Rainy Days

Sooooooo, it’s April and we got a tiny bit of snow yesterday.  I really was hoping that it would be warm enough to rain on the day when we did our rainy day storytime, but no.  Oh well, we had a good time making rain in the storytime room.

BOOKS:

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aardema (pictures by Beatriz Vidal) and Rain Romp by Jane Kurtz (pictures by Dyanna Wolcott)

Bringing the Rain was fun, but it got a little long for even my preschoolers.  I really like Rain Romp.  My best friend’s mom wrote it and it reminds me of her and of my friend and their house.  Of the two, it was the preferred story.  If I do rainy days again though, I think I’d scrap both books and pick something else.  

FINGERPLAY:

We made rain sounds in the storytime room after we listened to our stories.  We snapped our fingers (mostly moms), rubbed our hands together, tapped our thighs, clapped our hands and stomped our feet!  Then the rain started dying down and we did the sequence in reverse.  I think this could be supplemented well with a rain stick and maybe even some cookie sheets to make thunder.  

CRAFT:

We made some water-diffused art, inspired by the art in Rain Romp.  This is the EASIEST, COOLEST craft.  Kids really like it.  It’s cheap.  It’s super easy to set up.  I had coffee filters and plain white paper, washable markers, and a spray bottle filled with water.  That’s it.  The kids color on the coffee filters (with the white paper underneath so the markers don’t go through to the table) and then I come around and spray them and the kids watch the colors diffuse.  This was a great craft for scribblers too – or kids who don’t quite have the hang of all their fine motor skills.  The coffee filters with the wildest lines ended up looking awesome in the end.  Plus, the color soaked through to the white paper so everyone went home with 2 pieces of art.

Somewhere...Beyond the Sea

The theme of storytime this week was oceans and ocean creatures.  It fits the science-y theme of summer reading program and I’ve always had a fondness in my heart for whales.  It goes back to fifth grade where I thought that I wanted to be a marine biologist (like most girls that age, I think).  I was also reading Ring of Endless Light (and the other books in that series) and LOOOOOOOOVED them.  But anyway, storytime…

BOOKS:

We read Swimmy by Leo Lionni and Clumsy Crab by Ruth Galloway.

I love Swimmy.  It’s cute and fun and the pictures are gorgeous.  Clumsy Crab is okay.  I wish I had one about the ocean that was really funny, but there just wasn’t one in this bunch.  I’ll take any suggestions you have though for next time!

SONG/FLANNEL:

I found this book Somewhere in the Ocean by Jennifer Ward when I was searching for ocean books.  I didn’t know it when I grabbed it, but this is set to the tune of “Over in the Meadow.”  BAM.  Instant song.  I looked and looked and looked for cute clip-art marine animals to go with this for a flannel board, but I couldn’t find any. (Seriously, manatees are not included in cute clip-art.  Who knew?)  So I made my own.

I think they are super cute, but I’m biased.  The song was awesome, but I wish there was a way to incorporate more interaction into it.

CRAFT:

I recycled this craft from our Summer Reading Program.  One of our guests did a watercolor art activity with the kids – coloring with white crayon on white paper to make jellyfish that appear when painted over with watercolors.

(Full disclosure: these are examples from my summer reading program kids, not from storytime kids, but the storytime kids had a blast.  They love painting in all forms and for some of them watercolors were completely new.)