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.)

Roar Like a Dinosaur!

Who doesn't love dinosaurs?  That is why week 4 of storytime was all about Dinosaurs.  Our letter of the day was D for dinosaur and our color of the day was blue.  The kids knew lots of words that start with the letter D, like Daddy, dog, dragon, and of course dinosaur.  They also knew some things that were blue, many of them were wearing it.  There was also a lot of excitement when I asked who had blue eyes, apparently it was a lot of them!  (Sorry to all the brown-eyed kids we forgot week 1!)

Our first book was Dinosaur Dinosaur by Daniel Kirk.  I like this story because the dinosaur behaves just like a toddler or preschooler would.  He wakes up grumpy, loses a shoe in his messy room, throws a fit when playtime is over, I love books that both the kids and parents can relate to!  The rhyming text flows well and the illustrations are also nice and bright in this book.
 

The second dinosaur book we read was Ten Terrible Dinosaurs by Paul Stickland.  Stickland has written several dinosaur books that are great for the toddler / preschool group.  This story starts with 10 dinosaurs, but they begin to drop off as they play too rough or need to go home for a nap.  The last sleepy little dinosaur is woken from his nap by a 'roaring surprise' that catches the audience off guard as well.  The illustrations are mostly the dinosaurs, so they are easy for the kids to see.

Our final story was one that I modified to fit our dinosaur theme.  I took the book Dog's Colorful Day by Emma Dodd and changed dog to Dino.  I created the story as a flannel board to share with the kids.  Dino starts the day with one black spot, but as the day goes on he accumulates a variety of different colored spots.  By the end of the day he is a colorful mess!





While dinosaur books were plentiful, dinosaur songs that I liked were harder to come by.  But, I did find this song on another storytime blog here and we modified it slightly to have dinosaur names that I could confidently pronounce!

The Dino Goes
(To the Tune of the Wheels on the Bus)
The Tyrannosaurus Rex went roar, roar, roar,
Roar, roar, roar
The Tyrannosaurus Rex went roar, roar, roar,
When he roamed around.

 Repeat with:
Triceratop's horns went poke, poke, poke
Pterodactyl's wings went flap, flap, flap
Stegosaurus' tail went swish, swish, swish

We also sang If you're a dinosaur and you know it, just like If you're happy and you know it, only we did some dinosaur actions of stomping around, swinging our tails (or arms for those of us without tails), and giving a nice loud roar.

Not that is has a dino theme, but we sang the song Flitter Flutter by Johnette Downing and danced our scarves around to the music.  This song has a nice tune for fluttering the scarves around.

Our final song was We are the Dinosaurs by Laurie Berkner.  This is a favorite of mine as it has lots of action at the little dinosaurs march, eat thier food, take a nap, and end with a nice loud surprising ROOOAAARRR!!!

The craft we did was just ok in my opinion, but the kids really seemed to enjoy the process.  I try not to repeat crafts too often, so we made dino puppets out of white paper bags.  The kids had 2 green cricles (outside of the eyes), 2 white circles (inside of the eyes), 2 green paper strips (arms), 2 white triangles (teeth), and a red paper strip (tongue).  They assmebled the dino puppet and the part they really enjoyed came in when the used large circle stampers to decorate the dino.  The kids loved the stamping action and didn't seem to care the the dinosaur was a strange dinosaur/lizard/snake/alligator combination!

Shapes, shapes, shapes!

For week three of storytime we read books about Shapes.  Since the letter 'S' starts the word shape, 'S' was our letter for the day.  We talked about the sounds that S can make, and words that start with S, like snake, shoes, story, etc.  Our color for the day was Yellow and we also discussed some things that are yellow, like the sun, our name tags, and so on.

The first shape book that we read was Squarehead by Harriet Ziefert.  This is the story of George who has a sqaure head, likes all things square, and abhors anything that is not square.  He even claims that the dogs, cats, and the world are square.  But, one night George discovers that not all things are sqaure, and that other shapes can be good.  This story has some humor for both the kids and adults and the illustrations are nice and simple for storytime sharing.

Our second book was It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw.  This classic book presents a variety of white blobs that that various shapes.  It is a great story to involve the children as they guess what the shapes are as well as what the original blob might be.  I also like to use this one for shadow themes as the illustrations are white on navy blue.

This week we did a third shape book instead of a flannel story.  I found the book Shape by Shape written by Suse MacDonald.  Cut out shape illustrations layer to create a surprise character at the end of the story.  The pages also have bright colors so we could incorporate our colors theme as well as discuss the shapes that were layering on the page.  If I'd have had more time, this one would have made a good flannel story.

 
I had to get a little creative with the songs for this one.  We sang "If you like shapes" to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it."  I held up each shape as we sang to go along with the song:

If you like circles and you know it clap your hands
If you like circles and you know it clap your hands
If you like circles and you know it then your really want to show it
If you like circles and you know it clap your hands.

Repeat with:

Squares - stomp your feet
Triangles - shout 'Hooray!'

You could add to this song and do different shapes and other actions.  But, since our storytime friends are younger I decided to keep it rather simple.

We went back to the Clap your hands from the Wiggleworms love you album.  I like to do a variety of songs, but the kids do like repeating things that they know.

To end storytime we sang the song I know a chicken by Laurie Berkner.  We talked about the egg being an oval shape.  The song is fun as the kids shake their eggs, and we did shake the eggs in a circle, so that brought in a shape reference - not that one is really needed.

Our craft was one that I found from a craft site.  We made a chicken by gluing a small egg shape (head) onto a larger egg shape (body).  Then there were two elongated hearts for the wings, two stars for the feet, and a beak.  And, our chickens were yellow to reflect our color of the day.

Colors, Colors, Everywhere!

This week our story time theme was Colors to go along with the running session theme.  So, since colors starts with the letter C, our letter for the week was C.  We talked about words that start with C, a few names of story time friends, and talked about the sounds that C can make.  And, even though we were reading about all of the colors, our color for the day was RED since we were at the 'red bird' page of Brown Bear.

Our first story for the day was A color of his own by Leo Lionni.  The poor chameleon in this book has to change color to match whatever he is sitting on.  When he decides to stay on a green leaf to be green forever, he finds that leaves don't stay green for long.  Luckily, he meets another chameleon who shows him that changing colors isn't always so bad.  This book is great for the kids to participate and tell you what colors the chameleon has changed to.  If possible, a big book version would be nice as the format is a little small.  The illustrations are simple enough though that even in the smaller format it can easily be seen by all of the kids.

The second book that we read was Knock! Knock! by Anna-Clara Tidholm.  In this story, you knock on several different colored doors to see what is inside.  The children see all different things behind the doors such as a baby drumming, monkeys swinging, bears headed to bed, and more!  Before each door the kids can call out 'Knock, knock!  Who is there?'  Also, with each door they can tell you what color it is, though there is a 'yellow' door that in our copy of the book that looks rather orange.

Our final story was Pete the Cat: I love my white shoes by Eric Litwin.  This is a new book that I really love.  I turned the story into a flannel board so that I could expand on the colors used in the story.  In the book, Pete is walking in his new white shoes that he loves so much he sings a song about them.  He happens to step in a few piles of things (strawberries, blueberries, and mud) that change the colors of the shoes.  (This was the part I had planned to expand on and have him step in peas, oranges, etc., but we ran short on time.)  The kids really enjoyed this book and even the parents we singing along!

As it is almost October and the leaves around here start to change different colors, we sang a song about the leaves while waving some scarves around.  I think that this was another one I got from PUBYAC, it goes to the tune of London Bridge:

Autumn leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down
Autumn leaves are falling down, all over town.


Watch them as they whirl and swirl, whirl and swirl, whirl and swirl
Watch them as they whirl and swirl, all over town.


They fall gently to the ground, to the ground, to the ground.
They fall gently to the ground, all over town.


Take a rake and rake them up, rake them up, rake them up
Take a rake and rake them up, all over town.

We also used our scarves as we sang Shake your scarves from Johnette Downing's The Second Line album.  This is a nice simple song for scarves (the album has several) where the kids dance the scarves up and down, in and out, and on their knees and hands.

To end our scarf fun we said:

Dance your scarves up
Dance your scarves down
Dance them to your side
Dance them all around
Dance them on your tummies
Dance them on your head
Dance them on your shoulders
And put the scarves to bed

We ended story time with the song Boots from Laurie Berkner's Victor Vito album.  This song followed Pete the Cat well with a footwear theme.  The kids wear different colored boots (colored is used a bit losely, some of the boots are 'frog' and 'rain') and do different things like stomping, jumping, and running while wearing the boots.

Our craft for the day was a Tissue Paper tree.  We make these frequently in the fall, they always turn out so nicely.  There were several colors of tissues paper square for the kids to glue on the tree.  For the trunk they had a large tongue depressor and there where two smaller wooden sticks for branches.  The craft really pulled together the colors theme and the leaves from A color of his own as well as from the scarf songs.

L is for Library

Week 1 of fall session featured books about visiting the library.  I thought it went well with all of the 'housekeeping' we do in week 1 talking about guidelines for story time etc.  So, our letter focus was on the letter L.  I put a dye cut L on the flannel board and asked what letter it was and what sound it made.

Our first story was Lola at the Library by Anna McQuinn.  This is a great book for introducing toddlers to the library.  Lola and her mother visit the library where they return some books, visit the children's section and story time, check-out new books, head home for a treat, and end the day reading a book that they got that day at the library.  The illustrations are large and simple for toddlers see in story time.

The second book we read was I took my frog to the library by Eric Kimmel.  This is one of my favorite books about a girl who keeps bringing her very unusual pets to the library.  Unfortunatley, she finds that pets don't make the most well-behaved library visitors.  Well, the elephant is behaved, but he causes other sorts of trouble.  This is a funny story that highlights many features of the library.  Even the old card catalog!  I had to explain that these were replaced by computers, the kids seemed oblivious, but the parents enjoyed it.

The last story we did was the flannel story of Bill Martin Jr.'s Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?  This introduced them to the book that we will be talking about all session.  I had them name the colors and the animals as I put them up on the board.  We even threw in a few animal sounds for good measure.


To go along with our library theme we had a few reading and book related songs and finger plays.  One finger play we used to get our fidgety finger quiet went:
Open the book
Close the book
Give a little clap.
Open the book
Close the book
Put it in your lap.

We also sang If you like the library and you know it.  Just like If you are happy and you know it using the following verses:

If you like the library and you know it clap your hands
If you like books and you know it stomp your feet
If you like reading and you know it shout 'Read Books!'

Other songs that we did included:

Clap Your Hands from the Wigglworms Love You album.  This is a good movement song that has the kids clapping hands, stomping feet, brushing teeth, touching their nose, and waving hello.

I feel crazy so I jump in the soup from Laurie Berkner's Victor Vito album.  Another movement song, this one has the kids jumping into a bowl of soup where they jump, swim, splash, and then sit back down.

The color of the week was Brown for Brown bear on the first page of the book.  I printed off pictures of different colored things, ie. yellow bananas, red balloon, etc, and they had to help me find things that were brown.  There was the bear and a dog mixed in with the other items.

We finished with a craft where the kids made their own little book.  I just created a small booklet that had pages for the kids to fill in information about themselves like name, age, family, favorite things, etc. and spots where they could draw pictures that went along with the information they gave.  I also put out some stickers to add to the illustrating fun!

New for Fall

This fall session of story time I decided to focus on colors and letters.  Each week we are going to focus on a different color and a letter.  The color will come from Bill Martin Jr.'s Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? and the letter will come from the theme for the week.  We will talk about the letter, what it is, how it sounds, and try to find it in the titles of our books.  Then, we will end each story time with a flannel story featuring colors.  We will also talk about a page of the Brown bear book and discuss what things we can find that are that color.

This fall we also have a new Hello song that I found on a listserv (PUBYAC.org).  It goes to the tune of the 7 dwarves 'High-ho' song.  We sing:
Hello, hello
It's time to say 'Hello'
So step right up
And wave 'Hello'
Hello, hello!
        (Repeat)

In addition, we also have a second new 'Hello' song.  This one is Hello time from the album Teach a Toddler.  This song goes really well with the other, the tune is similar and great for marching!  We march, wave hello, clap our hands, stomp our feet, wiggle our bottms, and give ourselves a great big hug as we sing along.

To end story time, we will sing the 'Hello' song but replace all of the 'hellos' with a 'goodbye.'

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.