Me Caveman

Recently I ran across some picture books featuring cavemen that I thought were fun and so, a story time about cavemen!  I actually called our theme Me featuring the letter M because both book titles start with the word Me.

I decided to give Sparky a little rest this week and instead we had Animal from the Muppets here to introduce our theme.  Usually, at the end of story time, Sparky collects the kids name tags by eating them.  But, this week is the last week of the session so the kids get to take the name tags home.  Animal told the kids that Sparky was on vacation, looking for some name tags to eat!

Our first book was Me want pet by Tammi Sauer.  Cave boy wants a pet so he goes searching high and low and all over for one.  Each potential pet he brings home poses some kind of issue, so he has to keep looking.  I really like the dialog in this book.  Lots of 'cave talk' for cave boy and his family.  I love the part where the grandma is talking about one pet and says 'he no potty-trained.'  This is a cute story and led to a discussion of what types of pets the kids have at home.

The second book we read was Jeremy Tankard's Me Hungry!  In this book, you guessed it, the cave boy is hungry.  But, mom and dad are too busy, so he goes off hunting.  He finds some unsuitable foods before running across a big friend who happens to be hungry too.  They work together and are rewarded with a snack.  This one has really short text, but as I am reading I ask the kids if each item would be good for him to eat.

Our last story was more of a puppet show.  Animal came back and demanded 'me want cookie!'  Instead we tried to give him some fruits and vegetables, but he spit them all out.  The kids LOVED this.  Each item that I put in Animal's mouth was spit back out with a 'BLEHHHH' and then he shook his head and said 'mmm-umm, mmm-umm, Me want cookie!'  After spitting out an assortment of fruits and vegetables, Animal looked at me and very nicely said 'me want cookie pleeeease?'  So, since he asked so nicely we let him have a cookie, but wouldn't you know it, he chewed it happily for a minute before spitting it out and demanding 'me want pizza!'  Sadly, there was no pizza to be had, so he went off to take a nap.  I had wanted to use Cookie Monster for this one, but we did not have a Cookie Monster puppet.  My dad had 2 Animal puppets, and I figured that he looks kind of like a caveman, so that fit right in.  You can see more pictures from Animal's appearance here.

Our songs we not really related to cavemen (if there are any out there, let me know).  My co-worker noted dinosaurs lived with the cavemen, so we sang Laurie Berkner's We are the dinosaurs.  Two kids informed me that this was their favorite song.  It is fun to end with a loud 'ROAR!!!'

The Imagination Movers have a song called Shakable you.  We used our shaker eggs as we shook our arms, legs, head, hips, and then jumped around like crazy.  This is a very upbeat song.

It did rain a few days this week so that fit with Carole Peterson's Singing in the rain.  The great part about this version is that there are actions between each verse.  You add a new one each round and then say 'ooo-ga chuck-a, ooo-ga chuck-a' which sounds kind of caveman-like.  Each time we sang the singing in the rain part we put our hands in the air and waved them.

Our craft was rather simple this week.  We planted grass seed in a cup that was decorated like a face.  Each kid got some eye stickers and markers to decorate the cup.  The plan is that the grass seed will grow up to look like green hair.