Happy Valentine's Day!

This week at story time we celebrated Valentine's Day a week early.  Next week the actual holiday falls in the middle of my story time week and since our craft is a valentine card we went ahead and did the theme this week so that the kids can give their card to someone.  So, our letter of the day this week was V, for Valentine, Van, Vest, and Violet (a color and a name!).

The first book this week was all about hearts.  Micheal Hall's My heart is like a zoo is an adorable book that features lots of animals made for various sizes of hearts.  There are lots of animals depicted in this simple yet bold style.  The kids seemed to like this one and we were able to take a break from time to time and make animal sounds.  There were also a few 'silly' pages with hippos drinking apple juice and walruses lounging on towels that the kids enjoyed.

Our second book was Felicia Bond's new book Big hugs, little hugs.  This is a very simple and sweet story all about hugs.  It shows different animals hugging and different ways of hugging.  With only a few words on each page this one is good for the toddlers.  It would also be a good book about opposites.

This week's flannel story was from the book My froggy valentine by Matt Novak.  I ran across this story at Storytiming when Miss Cate posted it for a Valentine edition of Flannel Friday.  I loved the innovative use of the backs of the frogs so I added it in this week.  The story is about a princess that is looking for a prince.  She lets some frogs talk her into kissing them when they promise that they will turn into princes.  However, they are not human princes as Polly finds out after kissing them.  The real surprise is at the end when Polly kisses the last frog and turns into a frog herself!  Cute surprise that the kids (and parents) seemed to enjoy.  You can read more about my version of the story here.

Not all of our songs this week were lovey-dovey, but we tried.  We did do a few such as If you love me and you know it.  I modified If you're happy and you know it to sing:
If you love me and you know it wave hello,
If you love me and you know it wave hello.
If you love me and you know it then you really ought to show it,
If you love me and you know it wave hello.


Repeat with:
Give a Hug
Give a Kiss

We also briefly reference Valentine's Day with the song Counting valentines (to the tune of 1 little, 2 little, 3 little indians):
1 little, 2 little, 3 little valentines.
4 little, 5 little, 6 little valentines.
7 little, 8 little, 9 little valentines.
10 little valentines for you!

Then we sang it again only counting backwards.  We practiced our counting beforehand.  I had made up felt hearts to use as we sang, but instead opted to just count on my fingers since the song doesn't take very long.

Another song we did this week was Carole Peterson's Shake a friends hand.  This concept may have been a little above the 2 and 3's, but they made and effort to shake a friends hand, give high fives, scratch backs, and bump hips.  It was nice to see the parents getting involved too.

Just for fun was sang The Wiggles' version of Shake your sillies out.  We got out the shaker eggs for this one.

We ended story time this week with the song Skinnamarink.  I used Carole Peterson's version here.  It is nice and slow and goes through twice, so the kids get the hang of it but it doesn't go on forever.

Our craft this week was based on the book My heart is like a zoo.  I saw these adorable heart lions posted at Storytime ABC's.  I modified them so that they became cards with the message 'I love you, I'm not lyin'!'  (I have to say, my husband hated this pun and wanted me to put 'I love you and I'm not a tiger!' - too bad he is not in charge of story time!)