Story Time Zoo

I have fallen WAY behind on getting some of my story times posted.  I guess that is what happens when life gets busy!

Anyway, a week ago our story time theme was the Zoo and we had a lot of fun with it.  We featured the letter Z for Zoo.  I have started putting a picture with my letter of the day to help clue them in on the sound and start making the association between letters, sounds, words, and reading.  My crowd has been rather young, so when we reveal our letter of the day I get lots of random letters.  At least they are giving me letters and not numbers.

The first book that we read was Eric Carle's From head to toe.  This is a great book for the toddler crowd as it can be very interactive.  Each page gives an animal and a movement that they can do (i.e. the elephant stamps his foot) so the kids can do that move too.  It also has repetition which is great for early literacy.

Our second book was Monkey and me by Emily Gravett.  They way this book reads I really thought that I could sing it, but I was unable to come up with a tune that worked well.  (Let me know if you come up with one!)  Instead I did the book as a chant.  I would say a phrase and the kids and parents would repeat it.  This added one extra sentence to each page (the book has you say 'monkey and me' three times) but it worked out really well.  Then, every other page features the animals that the little girl and her monkey saw at the zoo.  Since the kids were already in 'chant mode' most of them went ahead and yelled out the animal - which is exactly what I wanted them to do.

Our flannel board was the ever popular Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell.  The actual book is a lift the flap book which is fun and the flaps are big enough to work in story time.  However, we already had a version that someone had made into a flannel board.  I actually had made one at my previous job but had to leave it behind.  You can see mine here.

We sang Sue Schnitzer's All the fish, which features lots of animals.  They are more of the pond than zoo variety, but lots of zoos have pond animals, right?

For Raffi's Going to the zoo we got out the scarves.  I had all of the kids wave them around as Raffi sang about Mama taking us to the zoo tomorrow and then we did the animal motions in between.

We have been ending every story time with Carole Peterson's B-Bananas.  The kids really seem to enjoy the repetition and the chant is fun to do.

We had 2 crafts to pick from, though many of the kids end up just playing with the toys.  For the crafters we had the outline of a letter Z and they could tear paper and glue it inside for stripes on a zebra.  There was also some yarn that they could add on as a mane.

The second craft we used cars to drive black paint lines onto a blank zebra to add stripes.  The kids really enjoyed this craft.  I had the zebras pre-cut and they could add the stripes then mount it to a piece of green paper.

Wild, Wild, Animals

This week we had what I thought was a super fun story time.  I saw the book Dear Zoo on the NYPL list and knew that I wanted to use it in a story time - especially once I saw several flannelized versions of it!  So, our theme this week was Wild Animals.  I added the Wild so that the letter of the day could be W since we had already used an A this session with Apple week.  I am not opposed to repeating letters as they are random anyway, but if I can avoid it and feature a new letter I will do that.

The first book that I read is a new one by Jane Cabrera (I always love her books), this is her version of The wheels on the bus.  But, this isn't just any bus.  This bus is filled with WILD zoo animals.  So, I had all the kids sing along with me as we flapped like flamingos, chattered like monkeys, roared like lions, and slept like bush babies (they are SO cute in the book).  The book might be just a tad long, but since all of the kids were singing and doing the actions none of them seemed to mind.

Our second book was Farmyard beat by Lindsay Craig.  I happened upon this book one day when looking for something else and knew right away I wanted to use it in a story time.  This book features farm animals (ok, they are domesticated, but they act wild and no one complained) who all 'caught that beat.'  There is a nice rhythm that goes along with this story so you have to rap it instead of read it.  (Well, you could read it, but what fun would that be?  And, I think it would be really hard to avoid falling into the rhythm, it's that catchy.)  The illustrations are really great with big cute animals. 

The final book of the day was our featured book Dear zoo by Rod Campbell.  I turned this one into a flannel story and the kids seemed to enjoy it.  I had a box for each animal and I put the box up with the animal behind it.  Then I would give hints like this box came with some bananas, or this box was making a hissing noise.  This worked a little better with the family story time where the kids are a little older, but the 2 and 3 year olds enjoyed it as well.

We had several animal songs to go with our books.  One was Sue Schnitzer's Jump, jump, jump where the kids jump like kangaroos, slither like snakes, wiggle like worms, and soar like a jet.

I had another flannel that we did with the song 1 elephant went out to play.  I was inspired by Miss Mary Liberry's Flannel Friday post for this song that goes:
1 elephant went out to play
On a spider's web one day.
They had such enormous fun,
That they called for another elephant to come.
'HEY ELEPHANT!!!!!!' (We really yell this part because yelling in story time is one of my favorite things to do!)

You repeat with 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 elephants.  Then, once all six are up there I say 'what do you think happens when 6 elephants are on a spider's web?  It starts to wiggle, and wobble, and...' and I shake the web until all the elephants fall off.

We also sang Laurie Berkner's I know a chicken.  This is always fun with shaker eggs.  Sometimes I do cut this one short because it is over 3 minutes long and 2 year olds can only do so much egg shaking before they get bored and start throwing their eggs :)

Our final song was All the fish by Sue Schnitzer which I find is always a crowd pleaser.  This song has fish, ducks, frogs, crocodiles, seagulls, and kids swimming and slashing in the water so there is a lot of action for the kids.

The craft this week was a fairly simple lion that I found here.  We changed it a little to make it simpler.  Thankfully, we have Ellison circle dye cuts, so the kids got one big orange and one smaller yellow.  They also got to try out scissors and cut a mane for the lion.  It was pretty simple, but they kids all liked roaring for their lion.

Flannel Friday: Dear Zoo

This week my story time theme was Wild Animals, so we did the book Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell.  I have been planning my story times around the New York Public Library's list of 100 Picture Books Everyone Should Know, and Dear Zoo is on that list.  I have seen this posted a few other times on Flannel Friday, but here is my version:

Sorry the animals are sideways, Blogger is acting funny today. 

I was so excited about my camel with his furry yarn, and then I realized that he has 5 legs.  Oops! :)

I think the kids really enjoyed this story (one little girl so much that she had to help me pull off all of the boxes!).  To add to the fun I would give them hints about what was in the box since my boxes are solid and you can't see through them.  For example, with the frog I told them that the box would not stop bouncing around, or with the monkey the box came with a bunch of bananas - although that one sparked a side conversation about how much they all liked bananas :)