You can find the rest of this week's round up with Tracey at 1234 More Storytimes, view past round ups with Anne at So Tomorrow, or click the Flannel Friday button to the right to view the page on Pinterest.
Storytime plans for children ages 2 - 5 including book reviews, craft ideas, songs, and activities.
Showing posts with label vegetables. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vegetables. Show all posts
10.28.2011
Flannel Friday: A Vegetable Lunch
You can find the rest of this week's round up with Tracey at 1234 More Storytimes, view past round ups with Anne at So Tomorrow, or click the Flannel Friday button to the right to view the page on Pinterest.
10.14.2011
In a Vegetable Garden
So, last week our theme was Cookies and this week we featured Vegetables - talk about a let down. When trying to introduce the theme I asked the kids what they thought the opposite of cookies is. Responses were things like cake, cereal, and milk...hmmmm...maybe we need to do a story time about opposites? Our letter of the day was V (here many replied A, which is understandable) and they had some trouble coming up with words for V. Luckily, Sparky helped them out with the words Van (because most of them probably arrived in one) and Vegetables.
The first book that we read was Mystery vine : a pumpkin surprise by Cathryn Falwell. This is a good vegetable book. It shows a family that plants a vegetable garden in this spring and as they are taking care of it they discover a mystery vine. As they care for the other vegetable plants they watch the vine wondering what it will be. Then, in the fall, surprise! The vine has pumpkins. I thought this was great for a vegetable theme and then I visited the pumpkin farm and discovered that pumpkins are really a fruit. (Make sense, who wants vegetables in a dessert pie?) So, we all go to learn something new at story time.
Our second book was from the NYPL list and was Ruth Krauss's The carrot seed. This is a nice short story for the 2 and 3s about a little boy who plants a carrot seed. Everyone tells him that nothing will happen with the seed, but he takes care of it anyway by pulling weeds and watering it. We even had the big book format, so that made Crockett Johnson's simple illustrations easy to see.
The last story we did was a flannel board of Vladimir Vagin's The Enormous Carrot. In my telling a bunny is trying to get a carrot out of the ground but it just won't come out. He asks friends to help him pull it out and even with several of them it won't come out. Then a mouse wants to help and the other animals tell him that he is too small. But, the little mouse wants to try anyway and guess what happens? My co-worker did this story a week ago and had the kids pretend to pull, that went over very well with my groups. I found a version of the story here, but I varied it some.
I did find some more vegetable songs this time around. We sang Laurie Berkner's Valley of the vegetables. I passed out bells to ring as we sang and I printed off pictures of the different vegetables that we 'eat' in the song. I'm not sure how much they really liked the song, but they did enjoy ringing the bells.
We also sang In our garden by Peter and Ellen Allard. This is a slower song, but you can do the actions of digging, planting, watering, picking, and eating. I have seen songs like this that are done acapella but I liked that this one gave us some background music.
Our final song was another Laurie Berkner, this time we sang I feel so crazy I jump in the soup. I mentioned that soup is often made with vegetables and then we jumped, swam, galloped, splashed, and sat in our soup. This is a fun song and it is short, which is good for the little kids.
I had planned for a vegetable craft so we made pumpkins with tissue paper. Then I learned that pumpkins are a fruit, but oh well, they are still fun to make and seasonally appropriate!
The first book that we read was Mystery vine : a pumpkin surprise by Cathryn Falwell. This is a good vegetable book. It shows a family that plants a vegetable garden in this spring and as they are taking care of it they discover a mystery vine. As they care for the other vegetable plants they watch the vine wondering what it will be. Then, in the fall, surprise! The vine has pumpkins. I thought this was great for a vegetable theme and then I visited the pumpkin farm and discovered that pumpkins are really a fruit. (Make sense, who wants vegetables in a dessert pie?) So, we all go to learn something new at story time.
Our second book was from the NYPL list and was Ruth Krauss's The carrot seed. This is a nice short story for the 2 and 3s about a little boy who plants a carrot seed. Everyone tells him that nothing will happen with the seed, but he takes care of it anyway by pulling weeds and watering it. We even had the big book format, so that made Crockett Johnson's simple illustrations easy to see.
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| My flannel characters |
I did find some more vegetable songs this time around. We sang Laurie Berkner's Valley of the vegetables. I passed out bells to ring as we sang and I printed off pictures of the different vegetables that we 'eat' in the song. I'm not sure how much they really liked the song, but they did enjoy ringing the bells.
We also sang In our garden by Peter and Ellen Allard. This is a slower song, but you can do the actions of digging, planting, watering, picking, and eating. I have seen songs like this that are done acapella but I liked that this one gave us some background music.
Our final song was another Laurie Berkner, this time we sang I feel so crazy I jump in the soup. I mentioned that soup is often made with vegetables and then we jumped, swam, galloped, splashed, and sat in our soup. This is a fun song and it is short, which is good for the little kids.
I had planned for a vegetable craft so we made pumpkins with tissue paper. Then I learned that pumpkins are a fruit, but oh well, they are still fun to make and seasonally appropriate!
1.09.2011
Green are the Veggies
Week 5 for storytime featured the letter V for Vegetables! And who loves GREEN vegetables? We do, or at least many of the children claimed to. (We made vegetable prints for the craft and apparently many of the kids wanted to EAT them not paint with them!) So we talked about things that are green, other than just vegetables and spotted a few kids who even wore green to storytime. Then we talked about all of the green vegetables that we love to eat.
Our first veggie themed story was Come into my garden by Cynthia Rothman. This book features all of the many vegetables that you might grow in a garden, even brussel sprouts, and notes that you can even stay and find lunch! We had this story in Big Book format, so the pictures were nice and large for all the kids to see. The story is short, which is good for this crowd, and can lead to a little discussion of other things that you might find in a garden.
The second veggie story was one of my favorites, Night of the veggie monster by George McClements. Subjected to eat peas every Tuesday night, a little boys turns into a 'veggie monster' the second that the pea touches his lips. Toes are curling, things are quivering, and then, the unthinkable happens, he accidentally swallows the pea only to find that it really isn't so bad. Parents tend to get a kick out of this story, especially those who know what a veggie monster really looks like.
Our final book was another story that I tweaked. I adapted the book Lunch by Denise Fleming into a flannel board to tell the story about a mouse who woke up hungry. He crept into the kitchen where he found an array of vegetables. Since we were focusing on colors, I tried to make a vegetable for every color. But, first mouse had to put on his pink 'bib' and grab his blue fork (the two colors for which no veggie could be associated). After eating his way through the rainbow, mouse was tired, so he went back into his hole to nap until lunch time. This was a good participation story as the kids could tell me what the veggie was and what color it was.
Songs about vegetables seem to be scarce. So instead we sang a song about gardening and the steps that it takes to grow the vegetables. It went to the tune of The Wheels on the Bus:
First you take the seeds and you plant them in the ground,
Plant them in the ground, plant them in the ground.
First you take the seeds and you plant them in the ground,
When growing vegetables.
Then you take the can and you water all around...
Watch as the plants come popping up...
Pick the veggies and eat them up...
Then to go along with the green theme, we sang Five green and speckled frogs:
Five green and speckled frogs,
Sitting on a speckled log,
Eating some most delicious bugs.
YUM YUM!
One jumped into the pool,
Where it was nice and cool,
Now there are four speckled frogs.
RIBBIT RIBBIT!
Repeat with 4, 3 ,2, 1
I have a magnet board with the frogs on a log and they jump into the pool as we sing. Sometimes we'll stop and count the frogs between verses to keep the kids' attention or kill some time. I guess we could have had the frogs eating some vegetables, but what frog wants to do that?
And wouldn't you know it, Laurie Berkner actually sang a song about vegetables. The Valley of the Vegetables on her Buzz Buzz album. I wouldn't say it was the most exciting song ever, but we shook our shaker eggs around as Laurie sang about vegetables.
We ended with Dr. Jean Feldman's Tooty Ta, which has no reference at all to vegetables, but is generally fun to do. Although this time I got the feeling that I was doing this one alone. The kids that were joining me were having a blast while the others looked on wondering what the heck I was doing. If you have never heard it, it is like the Father Abraham song where you keep adding actions until every part of your body is moving.
As mentioned earlier, our craft was vegetable prints. I set out trays of green and yellow paint along with cute up broccoli, green peppers, celery, and cucumber (the green veggies). The kids dipped the veggies into the paint and made prints of the paper. Some of them came out looking really interesting and of course the kids enjoyed the paint. (We provide smocks - adult size small t shirts - for such craft days.)
Our first veggie themed story was Come into my garden by Cynthia Rothman. This book features all of the many vegetables that you might grow in a garden, even brussel sprouts, and notes that you can even stay and find lunch! We had this story in Big Book format, so the pictures were nice and large for all the kids to see. The story is short, which is good for this crowd, and can lead to a little discussion of other things that you might find in a garden.
The second veggie story was one of my favorites, Night of the veggie monster by George McClements. Subjected to eat peas every Tuesday night, a little boys turns into a 'veggie monster' the second that the pea touches his lips. Toes are curling, things are quivering, and then, the unthinkable happens, he accidentally swallows the pea only to find that it really isn't so bad. Parents tend to get a kick out of this story, especially those who know what a veggie monster really looks like.
Our final book was another story that I tweaked. I adapted the book Lunch by Denise Fleming into a flannel board to tell the story about a mouse who woke up hungry. He crept into the kitchen where he found an array of vegetables. Since we were focusing on colors, I tried to make a vegetable for every color. But, first mouse had to put on his pink 'bib' and grab his blue fork (the two colors for which no veggie could be associated). After eating his way through the rainbow, mouse was tired, so he went back into his hole to nap until lunch time. This was a good participation story as the kids could tell me what the veggie was and what color it was.
Songs about vegetables seem to be scarce. So instead we sang a song about gardening and the steps that it takes to grow the vegetables. It went to the tune of The Wheels on the Bus:
First you take the seeds and you plant them in the ground,
Plant them in the ground, plant them in the ground.
First you take the seeds and you plant them in the ground,
When growing vegetables.
Then you take the can and you water all around...
Watch as the plants come popping up...
Pick the veggies and eat them up...
Then to go along with the green theme, we sang Five green and speckled frogs:
Five green and speckled frogs,
Sitting on a speckled log,
Eating some most delicious bugs.
YUM YUM!
One jumped into the pool,
Where it was nice and cool,
Now there are four speckled frogs.
RIBBIT RIBBIT!
Repeat with 4, 3 ,2, 1
I have a magnet board with the frogs on a log and they jump into the pool as we sing. Sometimes we'll stop and count the frogs between verses to keep the kids' attention or kill some time. I guess we could have had the frogs eating some vegetables, but what frog wants to do that?
And wouldn't you know it, Laurie Berkner actually sang a song about vegetables. The Valley of the Vegetables on her Buzz Buzz album. I wouldn't say it was the most exciting song ever, but we shook our shaker eggs around as Laurie sang about vegetables.
We ended with Dr. Jean Feldman's Tooty Ta, which has no reference at all to vegetables, but is generally fun to do. Although this time I got the feeling that I was doing this one alone. The kids that were joining me were having a blast while the others looked on wondering what the heck I was doing. If you have never heard it, it is like the Father Abraham song where you keep adding actions until every part of your body is moving.
As mentioned earlier, our craft was vegetable prints. I set out trays of green and yellow paint along with cute up broccoli, green peppers, celery, and cucumber (the green veggies). The kids dipped the veggies into the paint and made prints of the paper. Some of them came out looking really interesting and of course the kids enjoyed the paint. (We provide smocks - adult size small t shirts - for such craft days.)
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