Story Time Royalty

So our story time theme this week was technically Royalty, but I thought that for toddlers that could get confusing given that I give them a letter and then a picture from our theme that starts with said letter.  I decided to make our letter of the day K for King, since he is the head of all the royals.  That was I wasn't giving them the letter R with a picture of a King or Queen and spending half of story time explaining things.  (I tend to over-think stuff like this.)

We talked about other words that start with a letter K - it was a bit concerning when they called the kangaroo a Horse (???) but they got the Kite, Kitty, King, and, with a little help, the Kiwi.

The first book that we read was Lullabyhullaballoo by Mick Inkpen.  Little Princess is trying to go to sleep, but some of the royal subjects are just too noisy.  With the help of the story time friends we shushed those noisy subjects so that the princess could get some sleep.  This story has rhyming text and some lift the flap pages as you tell various fantastical creatures to SHHH!

We followed Lullabyhullaballoo with The Learning groove's Dance, freeze, melt.  I have used this a few times with outreach groups this winter and it is always a hit.  As the song says the kids dance, then freeze, then melt.  With each action you count to 8 then to the next thing.  In subsequent verses they twirl, jump, and run, but each of those are always followed by the freeze and melt.

Our second book was King Bidgood's in the bathtub by Audrey Wood.  Once upon a time I had a projector reel with this book and an accompanying song.  I loved to show it, the song is great.  Sadly, it has not been transferred to DVD or CD.  I requested a tape of it, but it did not arrive in time for story time.  So, I read the book - which is still great.  I just have to watch myself as I really want to sing some parts.  The kids seemed to enjoy this one.  King Bidgood refuses to get out of his tub.  He battles, lunches, fishes, and dances from the bath.  Will anyone in the kingdom be able to get him out?  There is great repetition in this book and fun illustrations.

After King Bidgood we got out the shaker eggs and ran around to Mr. Eric's I can shake my shaker egg.  This song is set to the music of In the hall of the mountain king (my sisters and I used to dance frequently to this in our living room growing up) and it starts slow and gets faster.  Mr. Eirc has the kids sneak, walk, then run around the room with their shaker eggs in the fun, energy burning song.

Since the kids were a little keyed up after that song we followed it with an active rhyme I found called 'Castle Capers.'  It is posted here at the Delta Township District Library Storytimes page.  It goes:

I am the king of running,
I run and run and run.My subjects all run with me,And we have so much fun!I am the prince of turning,I turn and turn and turn.My subjects all turn with meIt’s an easy thing to learn!I am the princess of dancing,I dance and dance and danceMy subjects all dance with meAnd dance when they get the chance!I am the Queen of jumping,I jump and jump and jump.My subjects all jump with meAnd sit down with a bump.

To go along with the rhyme I made up some visuals using Disney characters.  We have Mickey the King, Minnie the Queen, Donald the Prince, and Daisy the Princess.  To help me remember the rhyme I wrote a few lines on the back (so, the visuals were more for me).

The last book that we read was The foggy, foggy forest by Nick Sharratt.  This book shows shadows in the foggy, foggy forest and kids can guess what they are.  Then, turn the page to see what it is.  Every picture has a fun twist, such as, they were able to guess the witch on the broom, but the surprise was she had a motorized broom.  The kids LOVED this book.

The kids also LOVED the final song that we did.  I called it Queen Elsa's crowns.  So, mainly they loved it because of Elsa, but even the boys had fun.  We had a picture of Queen Elsa and 7 different colored crowns (the multi-colored one we called rainbow).  The song goes to the tune of Mary wore her red dress and goes:

Queen Elsa wore her purple crown, purple crown, purple, crown.
Queen Elsa wore her purple crown, every Sunday!

Then, I would ask them what day of the week came next (a few times we started with Sunday and went through the week to get where we needed to be) and I let them pick a new color crown and we sang it again with a different color and day.  Of course picking the crown was the most important part!

Our craft was a crown that they were given to decorate.  We put out glitter, jewels, feathers,stickers,  and crayons.  More kids than normal did he craft, so they must have liked this one.

I forgot to take a picture of the activity sheet this week, but it was just a house made with different shapes so that they could work on tracing shapes.  For play time we pulled out the princess dresses, though no one seemed that interested in them, instead they played with the castle play set and had tea parties.