Feeling Grumpy Story Time

It seems that around March is a rather Grumpy month.  Many of us are ready for spring to come (especially this year with the extra cold weather we have had) but March likes to hold on to the cold and snow creating grumps all over the place.

So, for this week's preschool visit I decided that I would do stories about being Grumpy.  I discovered that there are several great books for kids with a grumpy theme.  Lots of authors must be hanging around with grumpy preschoolers.  And, since weather leads to much of the grumpiness around here, I threw in a song about rain and my snowmen flannel board.  Little id I know that as I was doing story time we would be able to watch rain turn to snow, I could not have planned it better!  (I am probably the only person around here who was happy to see more snow.)

I have been starting off my visits with A new way to say hello from the Exercise Party album, so we began with that.

Our first book was the Pout-pout fish by Deborah Diesen.  I love this book.  It features Mr. Fish, a pout-pout fish with big pouty lips who thinks that it is just his nature to be pouty.  With a pout like his he just can't help it, and no amount of cajoling and cheering up from his friends will change him.  I really like that this book has a repeating refrain by Mr. fish about why he is pouty and it ends with three gloomy 'bluuubbbs.'  It is catchy enough that many of the kids were saying it along with me by the second or third round.  Mr. Fish does cheer up in the end, but you'll have to read it to see how.

We followed Pout-pout fish with the song If you're happy and you know it by the MFLP Band from the album Apples and Bananas.  This version has the kids clap their hands, pat their knees, stomp their feet (for this verse they sing 'if you are mad...'), beep their nose, and shout 'hooray.'  At the end of each verse you also add the previous motions, so at the end you shout, beep, stomp, pat, and clap.  It is a nice little twist to the version they all know.

The second book that we read was Grumpy Bird by Jeremy Tankard.  In this story bird wakes up grumpy (all of the kids claimed that they did not wake up grumpy).  Bird is even too grumpy to fly, so he starts walking.  His friends see him walking and decide to join him (I have no idea why because he grumpily tells each one that he is walking, but it is a good opportunity to discuss how to speak to your friends - especially when bird starts yelling).  However, bird discovers that doing things with his friends causes him to forget to be grumpy.

After reading Grumpy bird we sang Carole Peterson's version of Singing in the rain.  It was rather appropriate since it was raining when we started this morning.  (I did this song before during a drought and it was raining as we ended the song, so I am wondering if the rain might be my fault...)  This song mashes Singing in the rain with motions like form Dr. Jean's Tooty-ta, so very fun and active.

Our third book was Crankenstein by Samantha Berger.  This book came out late last year and was a favorite with my kids at home.  It features a little boy who looks very Frankenstein-ish and who says 'mmmmwwwwhhhhhheeerrr' or something like that, when he becomes Crankenstein.  The book explains all the things that might bring out Crankenstein, like; waking up, rain, melting pops, long lines, a cold Halloween, etc.  Luckily, Crankenstein goes away once he meets another Crankenstein - which is hilarious.  The kids really enjoyed that spread.  The one class especially liked how the pictures of the author and illustrator had been 'zombie-fied.'

We followed Crankenstein with the song Toes, knees, shoulders, and head by Kimmy Schwimmy.  Obviously it is like head, shoulders, knees, and toes backwards.  Between verses kids can point to or move other body parts.  Another fun twist on a classic.  I like those as the kids basically know what to do, but it is still new and a little different.

The last 'story' that we did was my Melting snowmen flannelboard.  Since we had snow in the forecast we tried to preemptively melt it away.  However, as we were doing the rhyme we could see the rain turning to snow.  I'm really starting to feel like I have some kind of weather power.  The kids liked this one so much that we did it twice - so bring on more snow!  You can see the snowman rhyme and how I made the flannel here.

To end my visit we did the Banana song by Carole Peterson.  The real title is B-Bananas (you can find it on her album Stinky Cake) but all the kids ask for the banana song as soon as they see me.  My toddler crowd has started to do the same thing.  We do it every week.  It is just that fun.

  

Those Silly Babies

Last month we started visiting a local Head Start program.  I went and did a story time for 2 of the classes there.  Generally I would use a theme that I was already doing for story times, but since story time is on a break I decided to use the theme 'Silly Babies.'

The first book that we read was Mustache baby by Bridget Heos.  This book has been a favorite at my house (so much so that we bought our own copy).  Even my husband likes it and he is NOT into picture (or any other books). This is the story of baby Billy who was born with a mustache.  His parents are told that they have to wait and see if it will be a 'good-guy' or 'bad-guy' mustache.  This is a very cute and funny story.

Our second book was Simon Puttock's The baby that roared.  In this story Mr. and Mrs. Deer are unable to have a baby of thier own, but as luck would have it they find one!  However, the poor little baby will not stop roaring.  The Deer send for help but oddly their friends keep disappearing when they are left alone with the baby.  This silly story has a bit of a surprise ending, adults will see it coming, but kids may not.

The third story that we read was The cow that laid an egg by Andy Cutbill.  Poor Marjorie the cow is sad that she cannot do any special tricks like the other cows.  But, when she lays an egg she gets all sorts of special attention.  The other cows are suspicious that the chickens have something to do with this odd event, but they all just have to wait for the egg to hatch to find out what the baby will be.

Since I do my 'on the road' story time much like my in-house story time I took along my ipod.  Sadly the dock quit working (despite the fact it had been fine a few days earlier).  But, as luck would have it, each of the classes that I visited had a dock, which was great as the alternative was using my phone and that speaker is not very loud, or having me sing sans music.  So, there was music and dancing...

We started with the song Shake a Friend's Hand by Carole Peterson.  This is a good group song as it has the kids shaking hands, bumping hips, and scratching the backs of their neighbor.

I had them counting with Mr. Eric and the Learning Groove's 1,2,3, Whee!  This song is very fun as the kids love to throw their hands up into the air and yell 'whee!'  They also get to jump and shake.

I took the library shaker eggs and we sang Shake your boom boom by Angela Russ.  While your 'boom boom' can be anything, we use the shakers and move the shaker a directed in the song, such as up and down, in and out, back and front.

We ended with the 'Banana Chant' or B-Bananas by Carole Peterson that I used all story time session. I enjoy this fun chant and the kids always seem to enjoy it.  It is nice that this version repeats so that the kids can do it once to get the hang of it and then they get to do it again.

A day at the Fair

Week 2 of fall story times brought the fun of fairs into the library.  However, due to life stuff, I only got to do one of my usual four story times.  Thankfully my wonderful co-workers were able to step in for me, but I don't feel that I performed the books and songs enough to have a good idea of how they all went over with the kids.  The only story time that I did was my Tuesday evening story time and those kids are always well behaved and receptive - partly because they tend to be a little older (4 - 5) and partly because they and their parents are awesome.  So, whatever I do on Tuesday nights seems to go well.

Anyway, our theme for week 2 was the Fair featuring the letter F.  This theme was very much inspired by Ms. Monica at Ram Sam Story Time who posted a flannel board about food on a stick.  Being a fan of food on a stick I knew instantly that this was a theme I wanted to use.

Our first book was I know a wee piggy by Kim Norman.  This is a cute story about a piggy who runs hog-wild all around the fair.  At each stop piggy acquires a new form of color, be it mud, paint, clay, cotton candy, this piggy becomes a mess!  The story is actually cumulative like I know and old lady, but I skipped the accumulating verse on each page and the rhyme still worked really well and left the story short enough to keep the attention of young children. 

The second book that we read was Janet Morgan Stoeke's Minerva Lousie at the fair.  I changed this book from a different one for the Tuesday evening crowd because it has some silliness that might be above the realms of a 2 or 3 year old.  Minerva is spending the night on her farm when she is drawn by some bright lights down to the local fair.  She gets rather confused by all of the fair stuff, she thinks the ferris wheel is an odd bulldozer, the carousel a horse barn, and the rabbit hutches.  The older kids were able to pick up on Minerva's mistakes making the book fun of the older kids.

Our flannel story was modified from Ram Sam Story Time.  Ms. Monica created a rhyme for her flannel board that I discovered could by sung with a little tweaking.  You can read her original version here.  I modified it to be sung to the tune of Animal Fair.  It goes:

I went to the county fair.
The pigs and the sheep were there.
When food I demanded,
We went to a stand
And got ______ on a stick to share!

Then I would whip out various foods on my stick to insert into the song.  Some were foods that could work, some were silly foods, and some weren't foods at all!  You can read more about my version here.

We used some fun songs in between our books.  Mr. Eric and Mr. Michael have one called Wiggledy Woo where you do a lot of wiggling.

Carole Peterson has a great finger play song called Tommy Thumb is up.  It is a twist on Where it thumbkin but uses the easier thumb, pointer, and baby fingers before getting all of the fingers into the mix.

We pulled out the shaker eggs for Angela Russ's Shake your boom boom.  This is a fun, upbeat shaker song.  She notes that you can use anything for a boom boom, I like shaker eggs.  We may be getting some boom whackers, so that could be fun with this song.

Sue Schnitzer's All the fish is a very popular song with the 2 and 3 year old set.  So much so that many of my friends have 2 year old kids who walk around singing it thanks to our church's Sunday school.

Because all of the Fair themed crafts that I could find were far beyond what I deem appropriate for story time I decided to have the kids make their own puppet show for the Three Little Pigs.  Pigs are a big part of the fair, so this isn't too far of a stretch, right?  The craft was basic, each kid had 3 pigs, 3 houses, and 1 wolf to color.  They got a stick for each pig and wolf and then the houses were attached to a cut paper bag.  This way as they told the story they could turn from house to house.  If you set the bag on a flat surface you could also have the wolf blow it away.  And, added bonus for the parents, all the puppet pieces could be carried home in the bag.  I was also able to put all the pieces into the bag before story time so they were ready to go drafts.  Also, I put some sheets with the story printed out on the craft tables just in case someone need it.

A Bump in the Night

Summer Reading ended a month ago now (boy this summer has flown) and I am finally getting around to posting about the last week of story times.  This is due to the fact that I had some out of town visitors (my sisters, one of whom traveled all the way from England!) so I was busy with that, plus the Olympics were on and I love the Olympics so I was rather consumed by gold medals and world records. 

So, finally I am catching up on my posting with our final story time theme, Things that go Bump in the Night.  This was a fun theme to throw into summer, though it may make this year's Halloween week a bit more difficult to plan.  My bump in the night theme went the route of monsters, though I try not to let them get too scary as I do have some young and impressionable children in story time.

Our first book was Jumpy Jack and Googily by Meg Rosoff.  I have used this book in the past with older kids and normally would not do it with just 2's and 3's, but my crowd seemed to be trending more along the 4's age range so I figured they could sit long enough for it.  This is a cute story about two goofy looking monster friends.  One friend, Jumpy Jack, is continually afraid that he will encounter a scary monster - but, look who he is friends with!  This is fun for the kids as you can ask them if they see a monster while Googily is checking to make sure that there are NO monsters.  When they determine they are cleared of all 'monsters' you learn that Googily has a fear of his own...Socks!  The kids seemed to enjoy this one even if they didn't catch all of the nuance (like the monsters Jumpy Jack was afraid of were the exact description of Googily).

The second book was Jon Stone's The monster at the end of this book.  This is a classic story and the kids of course loved it.  I do feel my reading of it was heavily influenced by the book ap (which is awesome!  If you have an i-something look into it.  It costs a few dollars but such a well done book ap, my own kids love it).  Anyway, I could tell that my emphasis and tone was mimicking Grover from the ap, but I guess that made it more animated, right?  If you do not know this story, poor Grover reads the title and becomes terrified of turning pages and encountering the monster at the end of the book.  He begs and pleads with the reader NOT to turn the pages and becomes increasingly agitated (that is, if you read it properly).  The fun part is asking kids if we should turn the page and having them all shout YES!  This book also has a surprise ending, guess who the monster at the end is?  Well, if you don't know you will just have to read the book to find out!

I made a monster flannel board to Bedtime little monsters by Emma Harris.  I found the idea on the blog Storytiming.  I did a post about it a few weeks ago here that you can read for full details.  Basically, we looked for the different colored monsters who were hiding behind things.  As we found each one we tucked it into bed.  Once all the monsters were in bed we sang them a lullaby song and put them to sleep.

Surprisingly, there were some decent, storytime appropriate monster songs out there.  My new favorite artist Eric Litwin has one called Stomp around the room.  In this song the monsters stomp, run, jump, and do various other things around the room.  We have a storytime rug where the kids sit, so we went around that rug as we sang.

Laurie Berkner has a song called the Monster boogie that is fun to do.  You act like a big scary monster and then dance around crazy.

Another song that we did was Carole Peterson's Singing in the rain.  This song has nothing to do with monsters, but I picked it because here in the midwest we had very little rain all summer.  I decided that we could end storytime with a 'rain dance' and guess what, it worked!  As the kids filtered out of storytime we discovered that it was POURING rain.  The kids were SO excited and I was feeling very magical.

Our video for the week was Maurice Sendak's Where the wild things are.  It is hard to do a monster storytime and not use this classic book.  I like the video because it adds some great music as Max and the monsters are having their rumpus.  I always worry about scaring the kids with this one (no idea why, they can handle much more than we give them credit for) but I do announce the title of the film so that anyone can make a quick escape if wanted.  Of course, they all enjoyed the film.

Super Heroes

Week five of our summer reading program highlighted Super Heroes.  Since it is always fun to come to work in costume, I dressed up as a generic super hero.  (Alas, I took no pictures.)  The costume made it really easy for the kids to guess the theme, so I also had them name some of the super heroes that they knew of.  The list was rather short.  I even had to point out a few that were on their t-shirts.

We had been opening story time with the song 'If you're happy and you know it,' but, given our theme, we sang 'If you're super and you know it.'  I left all the other words the same to save on confusion, though every time we sang the word super we flexed our muscles.

The first book that we read was Jez Alborough's Super Duck.  This is a cute story about a duck who is playing super hero.  Several times during the story he cries 'Make way for Super Duck!'  Goat is trying to get his kite to fly so Super Duck comes to trouble shoot the problem.  Things go a little haywire when they string the kite to the back of a truck and Frog ends up soaring away.  But, luckily, Super Duck is there to save the day.

Our second book did not really have super heroes per se, but Chickens to the rescue by John Himmelman has chickens stepping up to save the day.  Each day of the week something goes wrong on the farm, but, have no fear 'Chickens to the rescue!'  I love taking a chicken picture and holding it up for the kids to say 'Chickens to the rescue' along with me.  This time I even found a super hero-ish chicken and taped it to a bright yellow burst (think the old Batman t.v. show).  We practice shouting a few times before reading the book, then they can even tell me the title.  This book is always lots of fun.

Because books and flannels featuring super heroes were hard to come by for 2-5 year olds, I wrote my own flannel story.  You can read the full description here, but the gist of the story is a little boy devises his own super hero costume that ensures he will be the BEST super hero ever.  He gets all of the necessary abilities, but the end result is a little bit odd.

We did manage a few super hero songs.  In addition to 'If you're super and you know it' we sang 'Mask, cape, belt and boots' to the tune of 'Head, shoulders, knees, and toes.'  It went:

Mask, cape, belt, and boots
Belt and boots.
Mask, cape, belt, and boots,
Belt and boots.
I'm a super hero,
How about you?
Mask, cape, belt, and boots,
Belt and boots.

Recently I discovered that Eric Litwin (author of Pete the Cat books) also has cds!  One of his songs is called the Super Silly Tango, so we used this song.  The kids do various motions to tango music.  This first part is step, and step, and turn around.  The motions are pretty easy to follow and the music is fun.  Mr. Litwin has several albums - one for each color I think- so more of his music will probably be making its way into my future story times.

We also used the song Shakable you by the Imagination Movers.  This is a very fast paced song that I like to use with shaker eggs.  My favorite part is the ending when you shake and jump.  We hold the shakers high in the air and jump up and down.

Our video for the week was Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems.  Not much super hero tye-in here, but the story is great and I love this animated adaptation.  The kids really seemed to enjoy this video (so did the parents as they could relate to the story as much as the kids could!) 

Rockets in Space

Our week four summer reading theme was the Night Sky.  Some of my co-workers took this in the direction of lightning bugs and fireworks, but I did lightning bugs last week and my story time was planned for the day after fireworks, so I went with what you may see in the night sky or Things in Outer Space.

The kids did a rather decent job of coming up with various things you may find in space.  The moon, stars, planets, and even aliens were named.  I asked if they knew the names of any planets and Saturn (or Saturen) was a very popular choice.  Mars was another, but I think those rings are a big hit with the preschool group.

The first book we read was Zoom, rocket, zoom by Margaret Mayo.  This book ended up being kind of ho-hum.  It seemed good, there were lots of different space vehicles that I thought would be fun to see.  But, in the end it dragged a little.  When you have both a moon buggy and Mars rover they seem fairly similar.  The book shows astronauts working in space which I thought was neat, but the kids seemed unimpressed.  Perhaps I should have brought back Aliens love underpants.

 Our second book went over much better.  It was Space walk by Salina Yoon.  This book features each of the planets with a lift-the-flap page with a little rhyme about what makes that planet unique.  Very simple with big, planet shaped flaps.  I asked the kids if they knew any of the planets as we went along.  A few required hints like 'this is the planet where we live.'  Guess which one needed no hints?  Saturn!

Instead of doing a third book or flannel story I decided to get out our parachute.  It is only a 6 foot parachute, so it is impossible to use with my regular story time crowds.  But, this summer I have had smaller groups, so the parachute was the perfect size.  Before getting out the parachute I handed out rockets to all of the kids.  I made these out of toilet paper rolls.  There are crepe paper streamers as the bottom and I cut slits at the top and slid in a triangle to be the nose of the rocket.

 First, we did a song with our rockets.  I'm sure there are many similar rocket songs.  I made this one up to be sung to the tune of I'm a little teapot:
I'm a little rocket ready to go,
Turn on my engines and watch me glow.
When I get all revved up I'm ready to fly,
Count me down and shoot me high.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Blast off!!!

When the countdown began we put our rockets on the floor and then launched them into the sky when it was time to blast off.  The kids loved this so we repeated the song a few times.  Then, we got out the parachute.  They all stood around it and took a spot.  I then told them to put their rockets into the parachute.  Most were hesitant to do this at first because they did not want to give their rocket up, but when they saw we were going to 'blast' them into the air they were happy to comply.  We did a few rounds of putting the rockets in and then shaking them out.  I had planned to throw in a few balls as planets, but in hind sight I should have started with them because the kids were rather enthusiastic shakers and we barely got rockets back in before they were flying out again.  The planets never made it in, but the kids did have a blast!

Not many space songs were suitable for story time, but I managed to relate a few fun songs.  Greg and Steve have an upbeat version of I can hammer.  I explained to the kids that astronauts in space sometimes use tools to fix things.  Then I asked them what tools might be used?  They came up with a hammer (among other things) and we were ready to sing.  You hammer starting with one hammer and work your way up to five, using your feet and head when you run out of hands.  What I like about this version is that after you count up to five you then go back down to one.

Ladybug Music has a fun song called Roly-poly.  It is basically the classic baby ryhme (roly poly, roly, poly, up, up, up, roly poly, roly poly, down, down, down etc) set to funky music.  The kids enjoyed this one and the directions were easy for them to follow.  I told them the rolling hands motion was like how the planets travel around the sun, so see, it does not have to be theme-y for it to relate.

For our video this week I wanted to try and show the kids some fireworks.  It has been very hot and dry where we are and some fireworks displays were temporarily cancelled (we got some rain so they were rescheduled, but that was after my program).  I decided on a Thomas the tank engine short video.  The clip is part of the Thomas and Friends: Songs from the Station dvd.  It is a 10 minute story about the trains bringing in a delivery of fireworks, though their show is nearly cancelled when the trains have trouble getting back.  There weren't many fireworks in the clip, but there were enough and, of course, many of the kids love Thomas, so they were just happy with that.

To end story time I had them get out their rockets.  Some of them had been flying them around during the movie so I left the projector on so that they could see the rocket shadows on our big screen.  I had written a second rhyme to use with the rockets, but we had run low on time so I modified it to use as a good bye rhyme.  We said (and did the motions):

 Rockets up,
Rockets down,
Rockets zooming all around.

Rockets fast,
Rockets slow,
Rockets now it's time to go!

The original rhyme went:

Rockets up, 
Rockets down,
Rockets zooming all around.

To the left,
To the right,
Rockets spinning through the night.

Rockets fast,
Rockets slow,
Rockets stop, then go, go, go!



Finally, of course, they all got to take a rocket home with them.  I had a few extras so I replaced any that had been damaged during the parachute fun (which was very few).

Creatures of the Night

For summer reading week three we featured Night Creatures.  This was a great opportunity to do a little vocabulary lesson and talk about the word Nocturnal with my story time friends.  We talked about when we sleep and when nocturnal animals sleep and then we had a nocturnal animal scavenger hunt.

This was a really simple scavenger hunt.  I printed off pictures of nocturnal animals such as owls, bats, lightning bugs, hamsters, etc. and hung them around the story time room.  They were up when the kids came in, but none of them really mentioned seeing them there.  Since all of the animals were nocturnal, we had to turn off the lights to get them to come out.  I had a flashlight and walked around the room shining it on the different pictures.  We had already talked about some animals that were nocturnal, so the kids were able to guess most of them fairly quickly.  I think the lightning bugs were the hardest because they were just green specks on a dark page, but I gave them a few clues and they got it.

Our first book was Little Owl's night by Divya Srinivasan.  I went back and forth over whether I wanted to use this book or not.  I like that the pictures are simple and bold and I was drawn to it because the book features lots of nocturnal animals who are out while little Owl is exploring the night.  I did not care for the fact that there really is not much of a plot or story line in this book.  Basically, little Owl flies around, sees his night time friends, then returns home as the sun is rising to go to bed.  I decided to go with it in the end because the language is simple enough, the pictures are great, and since there were so many different animals shown it mostly made up for the lack of story.

The second book we read was Eric Carle's The lonely firefly.  This is a great night creature book because right now there are tons of lightning bugs flying around at dusk.  The pictures are Carle's signature style with a colorful firefly searching the night for other fireflies.  Along the way he finds lanterns, car lights, other animals and even fire works before finally finding other fireflies - that actually light up in the book!  So, with Eric Carle, fireflies, fireworks, and actual flashing lights, this book was a hit.

Recently there were a few Flannel Friday posts featuring lightning bugs that were perfect for our theme this week.  I got ideas from two other Flannel Friday posts this week.  One was Miss Alison at MiSS ALiSSON iS BLOGGiNG with her Five Little Fireflies with disappearing lights that I thought were super cute.  My other inspiration was Amy at catch the possibilites who posted her version ofTen Flashing Fireflies by Philemon Sturges.  You can read more about my flannel story here, or follow the links to the other blogs.

Since lightning bugs were hard to come by, we simply did songs that are fun.  Carole Peterson's Sticky bubblegum is a fun song for a wide range of ages.  It was suggested to me by a 2nd grade teacher, but much younger kids enjoy it as well.  In this song, you get your (pretend) bubble gum stuck all over to things like your knees, your neighbor's had, your foot to your nose (this one is a bit tricky for all ages), and even your head to the floor.  The tune is catchy and the kids have fun with this one.

Laurie Berkner did her own rendition of The lion sleeps tonight.  I passed out shaker eggs to the kids for this one.  We waved eggs over our heads for the slower verses and shook them really fast for the Weem-oh-weh parts.  The kids seemed to like it this one, but what was even more fun was watching all of the parents/grandparents singing along.

Another favorite song of mine is Sue Schnitzer's All the fish.  We use this one a lot because there are so many animal motions for the kids to do.  Plus, we jump up for the 'splash' part, so the kids have lots of movement.

This week's video was Peggy Rathmann's Good night, Gorilla.  Since there are very few words in this book it would not make the best pick for story time, but the animated version is perfect.  As the zookeeper is putting all the animals to bed, sneaky Gorilla is following around letting all of the animals out of their cages.  This is a really cute one and the kids seemed to enjoy it, not as much as they did Pigeon, but that was going to be hard to top no matter what.  Good night, Gorilla fit well with our theme and one grandma was very excited to inform me that the story is a favorite with her family.  I love being able to show kids their favorite story in a new way!

Nighty-Night

Week 2 of our Summer Reading Program featured Pajamas and a Bedtime theme.  I set the stage by wearing a pajama shirt and some wonderful cow slippers that my coworker had brought in.  Needless to say it did not take the kids long to guess our theme.

All of our books for story time this week were relatively new.  I like using new books in story time, especially for a theme like bedtime that gets played out a lot.  Of course there are lots of great stand by books and I always have those on hand in case, but it is fun to highlight new items to the collection.

The first book we read was My dad is big and strong but : a bedtime story by Coralie Saudo.  I ran across this book on the new shelf just last week and I knew I had to use it for story time.  It was probably more for the parents, but it is a cute book.  Dad does not want to go to bed.  His son has to beg, plead, and cajole him into bed.  Dad plays all the tricks that kids use to delay bed time and tests his son's patience.  The illustrations are a little more subdues than I tend to use.  There are lots of neutral colors with pencil drawings and some black and white detail, but the book is big, so they are not hard for the kids to see.

Our second book was Anne Margaret Lewis' Fly blanky fly!  This is an adorable book about the adventures of Sam and his blanky.  One night he tosses blanky from the top of the steps, and off they fly, zooming through the air like a rocket.  Blanky becomes all sorts of things, like a marching camel, a boat, a train, and even swings from the moon before bed.  Before we read this story I passed around the scarves that we use with songs.  As I read the book we made our scarves act like the blanky did and we marched, zoomed, and whooshed them around.

For our final story I did a flannel version of Pete the cat and his four groovy buttons by Eric Litwin.  I was really excited to use this book.  It is not really a bedtime story, but I changed the first part and said that Pete was putting on his favorite pajamas that had four very groovy buttons.  In the story Pete's buttons pop off one by one until the only button he has left is his belly button.  You can see more of my flannel board, along with Pete's buttons that actually pop off here.  The parents and kids really loved this book.  Many recognized Pete right away from his other books and by the end they were singing along with me.

We had a few sleepy songs this week.  Laurie Berkner's Goldfish take naps several times in between teeth brushing, showering, and bike riding.  Oh, and swimming because they are fish!

After reading Fly blanky fly we used the scarves with Johnette Downing's Flitter flutter where we move our scarves around like birds and bugs.

Hap Palmer's Five little monkeys don't sleep because they are too busy jumping, hopping, and spinning on their bed.  But, going outside to jump is just fine and they do that until they are exhausted.

This week's feature film was Mo Willems' Don't let the pigeon stay up late!  The kids LOVED this movie.  There was so much giggling and laughing (and not just from the kids, those parents were laughing too).  Poor pigeon does not want to go to bed, but he is clearly tired.  He tries to stay up, maybe for a hotdog party?  Mo Willems actually narrates this one along with some children who really enjoy telling the Pigeon 'no!'

Camping out at Story Time

This week kicked off our summer reading programming.  We are following the Dream Big: Read theme and decided to pick a different related theme for each week.  Week one was designated camping week to go along with our feature decor, a little campsite.  We set up a small tent (it can maybe fit four small children) and out fitted it with some 'log' seats (boxes covered with wood grain paper), a grill (box spray painted black with a cookie cooling rack taped to the top), and some play food.

Story time is a little different in the summer.  I do my program only once a week and it is for children ages 2-5 instead of 2-3.  We do not require registration so I do not do a craft because I would not know how many to plan for.  Instead of a craft, I end story time with a Scholastic or West Woods iconographic book.  We have a screen in the story time room, so I project the movie onto that.  We do have a movie license at our library, but I believe that these DVDs come with one built in.  I try to keep the video to one that is not much more than 5 minutes as I have found by then some of the littler ones get wiggly (and that is about how long it takes someone to discover they can make shadow puppets on the screen).

The first book that we read was Bailey goes camping by Kevin Henkes.  The pictures in this book are a little small for story time.  They are done in small boxes surround by a large white frame, but they are so cute and the story is great for a camping theme.  Bailey's older brother and sister get to go to scout camp but Bailey is too little to go.  He is very upset over missing the fishing, swimming, hotdog eating, marshmallow roasting, bear hunting, tent sleeping fun.  Luckily, mama has a solution and Bailey gets to have his own 'indoor' camp out!

Our second book was Wendy Orr's The Princess and her Panther.  In this story, two sisters, one dressed up as a princess and the other a panther, head out on a camping adventure.  They are brave (well, the panther tries to be) as they set up camp and settle in for the night, but an array of noises keep them up.  The illustrations in this one are bold and depict some scary shadows on the tent wall.  But, as the children see in the end, the 'scary shadows' were merely some friendly backyard creatures.

In addition to the books we went on a Bear Hunt.  I used a flannel board for this one.  All of the kids 'walked' with their hands on their legs.  At the beginning of each verse we said: 'Going, on a bear hunt.  I'm not afraid.  Gonna catch a big one!'  Then, at each impasse, we said 'Can't go around it, can't go over it.'  Our obstacles were:
Tall grass (rub hands and swish)
Big Tree (climb)
Wide River (swim)
Sticky mud (squish squelch)
Cold Snowstorm (shiver)
Dark Cave (cover eyes)

When we went into the cave I covered my eyes and wandered over to the crowd.  I put my hand out and felt a few kids on the head and talked about how I felt some thing warm and hairy that must be a BEAR!  So we ran quickly back through our obstacles to get away.  I thought for sure the kids would correct me that the 'bear' was just kids, but no one did.

The songs we did were not all that camp-y.  We sang Here comes a bear by The Wiggles.  This was before our bear hunt, but the song also has hopping kangaroos, slithering snakes, and crawling wombats.

I found a new song called Shake your boom boom from the Smart Moves 3 album.  This has very upbeat music and tells kids to 'shake your boom boom' in all different directions.  Our boom booms were shaker eggs.

When we did a search for camp songs on Youtube we came up with the B-Bananas (or Bananas or Bananas unite) song several times, so I used Carole Peterson's version.  She does the song twice with the second verse being a little faster.  The kids always seem to enjoy this song.

Another camp song that came up a lot was Baby Shark.  We did this a few years ago when summer reading was a water theme and the kids seem to enjoy it.  I do it as:
Baby shark, do-do, do-do.  Baby shark, do-do, do-do.  (Touch arms a wrist and open hands for mouth)
Mommy shark, do-do, do-do.  Mommy shark, do-do, do-do.  (Tough arms at elbow and open for mouth)
Daddy shark, do-do, do-do.  Daddy shark, do-do, do-do.  (Use whole arms as mouth)
Swimmer guy, do-do, do-do.  (Swim)
Sees a shark, do-do, do-do.  (Make fin on your back)
Swims away, do-do, do-do.  (Swim)
Swim faster! Do-do, do-do.  (Swim fast)
Got away! Do-do, do-do.  (Wipe brow)
Sad shark, do-do, do-do.  (Make sad face) 
That's the end, do-do, do-do.

Obviously there are lots of variations of this.  With an older crowd the shark may 'get' the swimmer who has to hop away, but I like to keep it tame for the little kids.

We ended with the video Bats at the Beach by Brian Lies.  In this story bats have a night of fun at the beach playing in the waves, having picnics, and sitting around a campfire.  The kids get to see the bats doing very similar things as people (aside from snacking on bugs - ewww) as they play at the beach.  The story is narrated by the author himself which is neat.

As the kids left I gave each of them a few camp themed coloring pages as well as a s'more snack.  The snack was golden graham cereal (actually the knock-off variety) with marshmallows and chocolate chips.  I generally do not do food, but this was perfect for the theme and the kids loved it.

Something Fishy

Week 4 of the summer reading program brought with it books about fish.  Given all of the wonderful books out there about fish it was easy to do this theme as well as our earlier 'under the sea' theme.

The 2's and 3's started with the book Fish wish by Bob Barner.  This is the story of a little boy who wonders what it would be like if he were a fish in the sea.  This book has wonderfully vivid illustrations and simple text that is great for the 2 and 3 year old storytime crowd.

Our second book was Ten little fish by Audrey Wood.  When mama fish takes her little fish out to play, they disappear one by one until there is just one lonely little fish left.  But that one fish isn't lonely for long.  This is a nice counting story and the illustrations are very appealing to younger children.

The final story that the 2's and 3's read was Hooray for fish! by Lucy Cousins.  Hooray for fish shows the plethora of different fish that you might find in the ocean, along with a few that might just be a little to strange to be real.  The rhyming text and vivid illustrations make this the perfect storytime book.

Keeping with our theme, we sang our fish songs that we had been singing all session: All the fish by Sue Schnitzer and The goldfish by Laurie Berkner.  We also revisited the 'Creatures in the Ocean' song that we sang with the Commotion in the Ocean story time.

We finished this week of storytime with a simple craft, both the 2's - 3's and 4's - 5's did the same craft.  Each child was give a blue sheet of cardstock, some green crepe paper, some goldfish crackers, glue, and crayons.  They used the crepe paper to make sea weed and spread the fish in the ocean around, in, or behind it.  It did take quite a bit of glue to get the crackers to stick, so the papers were a bit wet when they left.  But, the children were really creative with this craft and came up with some great collages.

The 4's and 5's started with the book The rainbow fish by Marcus Pfister.  Rainbow fish is the only fish with beautiful, shimmering scales.  He is the most beautiful fish but he has no friends.  Rainbow fish is told that to make friends he should share his scales, but he isn't sure that he can part with his beautiful rainbow scales.  This is a great story for this group about sharing and making friends.

Next we read The pout-pout fish by Deborah Disen.  Mr. Fish is really grumpy and as all of his friends try to cheer him up he reminds them that he is a pout-pout fish and is 'destined to be glum.'  The pout-pout fish is one of my favorite books to read aloud.  This story has great repetition and rhyme and a fun 'surprise' ending.

Finally we finished with The fish who could wish by John Bush.  One silly fish has the ability to make anything that he wishes come true.  He has lots of fun wishing for all sorts of silly things just because he can, but what happens when he wishes to be like all the other fish.  This is a silly story and a great book to share with the 4's and 5's.

To the Beach!

For the third week of Summer Reading we found ourselves washed away with books about the beach. Since the kids were guessing again, I brought in a beach towel, very large sunglasses, a beach bag, an umbrella (for the shade, hopefully not for rain), and a beach ball.

The first story that the 2's and 3's read was All you need for a beach by Alice Schertle. This is a great book for this age and the story explains all that you need to have for a great day at the beach, right down to the teenist, tiniest, 500 million grains of sand.

Our second book was Miranda's beach day by Holly Keller. Miranda's mother takes her on a beach adventure for the day where Miranda gets to build sand castles, chase crabs, and make friends. This is a great book for toddlers as it captures thier personal experience at the beach.

The final story the 2's and 3's heard was Beach day! by Patricia Lakin. Beach day! is the story of four alligators who set off to spend a day at the bach. When they get side tracked, and lost, along the way they end having a beach night. This story has very simple text and large, bright illustrations that are good for storytime.


Since a day at the beach isn't much fun without a beach ball, we listened to the song Beach ball baby from Katherine Tines Hunk-ta-Bunk-ta Funsies 1 and tossed a beach ball around as we sang. We also rolled the ball on the floor back and forth to each other.

We also beach boogied to The Wiggles' Beach, beach, sandy beach song from the Getting strong: wiggle and learn album. For this song scarves were passed around for the children to wave in the air as they danced to the music.

To end story time we got out a box of 'clean sand' and let the kids play with it. Clean sand is made up of equal parts sand and flour (3 cups of each to start) with about 1/4 cup oil, and 1 cup of water mixed in. The consistency is that of gritty play dough. You could use colored sand or add food coloring for variety. The kids had a great time playing with it. They were each given a tray to put their sand on and there were cups, spoons, plastic animals, plastic bugs, forks, and rocks for them to play with in the sand. This was a great activity for the kids and they didn't want to leave!
I will note, the recipe said that the sand could be stored in an airtight container to be re-used. I had it in a container (maybe not airtight enough) and after a few weeks it grew mold. Either way it was cheap and great fun.

The 4's and 5's started story time with the book Rita and Whatsit at the beach by Jean-Philippe Arrou-Vignod. In this story Rita is very excited about all of the fun she can have at the beach, but her dog, Whatsit, isn't so keen about joining in. He agrees to play, but only if he gets a treat. This story shows all of the imaginative fun that can be had at the beach, even if your only playmate is a lazy dog.

The 4's and 5's also read Alice Schertle's All you Need for a beach and then we finished with To the beach! by Linda Ashman. To the beach! is about a family as they prepare to leave for a day at the beach. With the car packed up and ready to go, they set off only to realize they left something behind. This leads to remebering something else, then one thing more, then another, until they wonder if they will ever get to leave (or of there is any more room left in the car). This is a fun story with very amusing illustrations.