Shapes, shapes, shapes!

For week three of storytime we read books about Shapes.  Since the letter 'S' starts the word shape, 'S' was our letter for the day.  We talked about the sounds that S can make, and words that start with S, like snake, shoes, story, etc.  Our color for the day was Yellow and we also discussed some things that are yellow, like the sun, our name tags, and so on.

The first shape book that we read was Squarehead by Harriet Ziefert.  This is the story of George who has a sqaure head, likes all things square, and abhors anything that is not square.  He even claims that the dogs, cats, and the world are square.  But, one night George discovers that not all things are sqaure, and that other shapes can be good.  This story has some humor for both the kids and adults and the illustrations are nice and simple for storytime sharing.

Our second book was It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw.  This classic book presents a variety of white blobs that that various shapes.  It is a great story to involve the children as they guess what the shapes are as well as what the original blob might be.  I also like to use this one for shadow themes as the illustrations are white on navy blue.

This week we did a third shape book instead of a flannel story.  I found the book Shape by Shape written by Suse MacDonald.  Cut out shape illustrations layer to create a surprise character at the end of the story.  The pages also have bright colors so we could incorporate our colors theme as well as discuss the shapes that were layering on the page.  If I'd have had more time, this one would have made a good flannel story.

 
I had to get a little creative with the songs for this one.  We sang "If you like shapes" to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it."  I held up each shape as we sang to go along with the song:

If you like circles and you know it clap your hands
If you like circles and you know it clap your hands
If you like circles and you know it then your really want to show it
If you like circles and you know it clap your hands.

Repeat with:

Squares - stomp your feet
Triangles - shout 'Hooray!'

You could add to this song and do different shapes and other actions.  But, since our storytime friends are younger I decided to keep it rather simple.

We went back to the Clap your hands from the Wiggleworms love you album.  I like to do a variety of songs, but the kids do like repeating things that they know.

To end storytime we sang the song I know a chicken by Laurie Berkner.  We talked about the egg being an oval shape.  The song is fun as the kids shake their eggs, and we did shake the eggs in a circle, so that brought in a shape reference - not that one is really needed.

Our craft was one that I found from a craft site.  We made a chicken by gluing a small egg shape (head) onto a larger egg shape (body).  Then there were two elongated hearts for the wings, two stars for the feet, and a beak.  And, our chickens were yellow to reflect our color of the day.