Flannel Friday: Birthday Cake

 This week's story time was all about birthdays!  We celebrated my puppet Sparky's birthday.  Despite what his hat says he was turning 2.  My flannel this week was inspired by Storytime Katie, although I ended up making my own rhyme so the kids could 'blow' out the candles.

We had a cake and we 'lit' the candles, counting them as we went.  Then our rhyme went:
5 candles on a birthday cake.
If we blow one out, how many does that make.

Then, all of this kids would blow as hard as they could and I would pull off one flame.  Then, we re-counted the flames and repeated with 4, 3, 2, and 1 candles.

My grand plan was that I would have fishing wire attached to the flames and I could pull them of invisibly.  But, I made a mistake and glued the wire on coming out of the bottom of the flame instead of the top, making them harder to stick on and disguise.  So, not having much time for a re-do, I just cut the wire and did it by hand.

Also during story time we 'baked' a cake using the foam baking ingredients I used for a cookie baking story time last fall.  Sparky dropped the ingredients in and stirred them around (the kids added to the stirring motion) and then put them in the oven.  When story time was done, Sparky gave everyone a cupcake!  Somehow, it never fails that if I serve food at story time the parents tell me how great the program was (which is odd as I always expect that they will be annoyed I gave their children sugar).

The round-up this week is hosted by Cate at Storytiming.com.  A list of past round-ups can be found at Sotomorrow and all contributions will be pinned to the Pinterest page, found by clicking the Flannel Friday button to the right. 

Happy Birthday Sparky!

 This week at story time we celebrated Sparky's birthday.  (Actually, it was my birthday, but I decided to share it with Sparky and avoid all of the 'How old is Miss Sarah' questions.)  So our letter of the day was B for Birthday.

We began by talking about how old everyone turned on their birthday.  I had planned to talk about what month their birthday was in, but they had enough trouble telling me how old they are, so I skipped that one.  But, we talked about how on your birthday you have cake and blow out candles, open presents, and sometimes have a party and play games.

Our first book was Little Mouse and the big cupcake by Thomas Taylor.  This is a cute story about a little mouse who finds a cupcake that is so big that he cannot carry it home.  When friends come by he asks for their help carrying it, but it is too big for all of them.  But, they do ask to try the cupcake and being very good at sharing little mouse lets everyone take a bite.  Before long the cupcake is the perfect size for a mouse and everyone has had a nice lesson about sharing.

Before we read our second book Sparky came out and announced that he wanted to make some cake.  So, he got out a bowl and we put ingredients for a cake into it and Sparky mixed it up.  Last fall I had done a cookie story time, so I already had foam ingredients for the cake.  Sparky put it in the oven to cook while we read some more books.

The second book we read was Jan Thomas' A birthday for Cow!  I had a hard time telling if the kids liked this book or not.  The parents had some chuckles, so someone enjoyed it.  In the story, pig and mouse want to make a birthday cake for cow.  Duck tries to help, but keeps trying to sneak a turnip in wherever he can.  Despite duck's efforts, cow and mouse get a cake baked and decorated.  When cow comes along, he is really excited to get .... A TURNIP!!

This week's flannel story was blowing out candles on a birthday cake.  I got inspiration for it from Storytime Katie.  Since blowing out candles is the best part of a cake I made up a rhyme so that the kids could do that.  First, we lit the candles on the cake, counting as we went. 

 Then we said:
5 candles on a birthday cake.
If we blow one out, how many will that make?

Then all of the kids would blow and I pulled off one flame and we counted the flames that were left.  We repeated the rhyme with 4, 3, 2, and 1 candles until they were all 'blown out.'

We had fun singing Carole Peterson's Stinky cake song.  This song is all about baking a really stinky cake.  I gave all the kids scarves to wave in front of their noses as we added dirty socks, moldy fish, baby diapers, and a stinky skunk into the cake.  I had all of these items on hand so I would drop them into the bowl as we sang about them.  I was rather surprised by how many kids said that they would eat the cake.

Carole Peterson was busy during story time because we also did two more of here songs.  Tommy Thumb is up is a fingerplay song that I have used many times.  It is a good sitting song and is much like Where is Thumbkin.  I like that in Carole's version the kids use thumb, pointer fingers, pinkie fingers, and all the fingers; leaving off the tricky middle fingers.  We ended with B-Bananas which is a chant where the kids act like a banana, peel it, eat it, go bananas, then repeat.

Just for fun we also sang Clap your hands from the album Wiggleworms love you.  This is an active song where the kids clap, stomp, wave, and brush their teeth.

Sparky's cupcakes finished up just as story time was ending, so our craft for the day was icing cupcakes.  To make things easier I pre-portioned the icing and gave kids a craft stick to spread it with.  Then they took turns adding some sprinkles.  Most ate all of the cupcake before going, but I did have some baggies on hand for those who wanted to finish the cupcake later.

Flannel Friday: Baking Cookies

This week my story time theme was cookies, so we made cookies of our own!  You can read all about my story time plan here, along with the inspiration behind my baking idea.  Anyway, the idea was that we were going to 'bake' cookies while reading our last book.  So, I made ingredients out of craft foam and I passed them out to the kids.  Then, I asked for different items and they brought them to me (or they just all brought them at once and I named what they were putting in the bowl - I expected that would be the case).  I mixed it all up with a spatula and then put real cookie dough into a hidden Easybake Oven.  (I kept it out of sight behind my cart and on a plastic chair so that no one would touch it.)  Then we started smelling cookies as we read Who ate all the cookie dough by Karen Beaumont.  After the book, I pulled out the cookies so they could see what they made.  Then we ate cookies!

 So, my flannel this week is simply cookie making ingredients.  I made extras of each so that I would have enough for the 25 kids we tend to get in story time, but I only took a picture of each different item. 

I did most of these free hand.  I think that I found a clip art image of a liquid and dry measuring cup.  I added a little dimension by making the salt and sugar sparkly, the baking soda is the soft side of velcro, and the flour is flannel.  I also put clear tape over the brown part on the vanilla to make it look wet (I am suddenly wondering why I did not do that with the water, oh well).  I labeled all of them thinking the parents could help send them up when I asked for specific items, but they all just brought them anyway :)

It was hard to tell if the kids got the idea that we were supposed to have made the cookies, but all of the parents seemed to like the idea.

Visit Miss Anna at her blog Future Librarian Superhero for the full round up this week.

Me Want Cookie!

This week story time was all about COOKIES!  The Cookie Monster in me was really happy this week, so were all of my story time friends who I got to share cookies with.  So, of course, our letter of the day was C and our NYPL booklist book was If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

I do have to say, I feel badly for my Monday group.  I do 3 story times each week and the poor Monday kids are always my test subjects.  Usually, I don't change much, only things that really don't go over well and even then I may not change it if they are a really young group.  This week though, I changed a whole book and the order of all the books because they were just so wiggly.

I had built this story time around an idea that a professor of mine, Dr. Brodie, presented in one of my library school classes.  She talked about reading the book The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins while having cookies bake in an Easybake Oven.  She said that the smell got the kids attention as she was reading.  Well, recently someone passed along an Easybake Oven to my daughter and I figured why not use it in story time?  So, I practiced with the oven (I found that it cooks refrigerated cookie dough rather nicely) and prepared an elaborate production.  Instead of a flannel story this week, I made 'ingredients' out of craft foam and passed them out to the kids.  Then I asked for different things and they brought them to my bowl (or they all bombarded me whether I asked for what they had or not).  We mixed them a little and then Sparky 'put them in the oven.'  I had the Easybake hidden behind my cart so I quickly slid the dough into the oven and read the last story.  This was the last book and I think The Doorbell Rang was just a little too long for my group.  So, for the other groups I switched to the book Who Ate All the Cookie Dough, which is shorter and worked much better!  Then, we pulled the cookies out of the oven and Sparky gave them all some cookies to eat!  (I should remind you here to turn your oven off - I remembered that the first two times I did this, but the third time I slid the cookies back in because they didn't look done and then forgot!  Luckily one mother noticed and we got it turned off, but I had some charcoal cookies and the entire library smelled like burned cookies.  Thankfully no smoke alarms went off!)  Anyway, here are the other things we did (in the order that worked better):

The first book we read was If you give a mouse a cookie by Laura Numeroff.  This was the book from the 100 picturebooks everyone should know list and of course it is a classic.  I was a little surprised that not more of the kids seemed to know this story, but I guess that it is good I got to share it with them.  I just love how the little mouse in this story is just like a toddler in that each little activity leads to another and they all lead him back to cookies!

Our second book I added after changing things around.  I don't know how I missed it initially, but The cow loves cookies by Karma Wilson is perfect for a cookie story time.  It talks about what all the other animals on the farm eat, but the cow loves cookies!  I had them help me with this one.  The word 'cookies' pops up several times, so when we got to that word I held up a spatula and everyone shouted 'cookies!'  It added some fun to the book and helped keep the kids (and parents) involved.

The third book we read was Karen Beaumont's Who are all the cookie dough?  This is a cute rhyming story about a kangaroo who is trying to bake cookies but all the dough has disappeared.  (Very appropriate to read after having 'made' our own cookie dough.)  This is a shorter one, but it has great repetition for the younger kids.  I even heard some parents and kids reading along with me.

The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins was originally part of my list, but, as mentioned above, the Monday crowd did not go for it.  It is a classic story and has the repetition that the kids usually go for, they just did not care for this one.  I think that maybe with an older crowd it would do better.  I also think that it could make a good flannel story and you could keep redistributing the cookies (in the story mama passes out some cookies, but the doorbell keeps ringing and as other kids come in they have to reallocate cookies so that everyone can have some).

Our songs were not cookie, or even food related, but they were good movement songs.  We did Clap your hands from the album Wiggleworms Love You.  This song has the kid clapping, stomping, brushing their teeth, and touching their nose.

We also sang Tommy Thumb is up by Carole Peterson.  This is a great fingerplay song that I use quite a bit.  It is along the lines of Where is Thumbkin but the kids use their thumb, index finger, pinkie finger, and all of the fingers together.  I think leaving the two middle ones out is good for the little kids as they can't really get those ones up anyway.

I had planned for the song Peanut butter from the Where is Thumbkin album, but we did not have time for it this week.  It is the song about making peanut butter and jelly.  This was the most upbeat version I could find.

Our craft for the week was my proven crowd pleaser - food!  I gave each kid a bag with a chocolate chip cookie and a sugar cookie.  Then they had a dollop of icing and a craft stick to spread it onto the cookie with.  I also gave them a cookie monster coloring page to take home.