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.

Flannel Friday: Flannel Organization and Preservation

That title sounds like it could be a class in library school and no, I do not have a flannel story about organization and preservation (though it would make that class a LOT more interesting!).  We are currently on a story time break and I have no new flannels to share.  We tend to get the month of August off to wind down from summer and gear up for the fall season, so I will be making more soon.  Plus, for the last two weeks I was for too distracted by the Olympics to be posting.  Therefore, this week I am sharing my flannel storing tips.

Fist off, flannel organization:
Each person in our department has a file drawer to do what we please with.  Mine is currently being used for storing my flannel / foamie stories, though I am quickly running out of space.  I suppose I could move into boxes, but I like having the whole collection together.  I have a large envelope for each story and the envelopes are shoved in there alphabetically.  I do have a decent sized section at the beginning with those that have a number in the title, such as 5... or 10..., first by number then subject.  Fairly straight forward.

I keep a template in a Word document so that I can have uniform labels on all of my envelopes (very anal librarian of me, I know).  Each label has first the title, larger and bolded, and then additional information, such as 'based on the book...'  Sometimes I share pieces among stories, so if that is the case I will note that under the title, i.e. 'use cow and pig pieces from 5 Red Apples.'  Often I will type out the entire rhyme or story if it is not from a book.  If the rhyme is particularly long I will leave a printed copy in the envelope to pull out and use during story time.  If I save any paper templates I will also keep those in the envelope in case of future emergency.

 In addition to my Word document I also keep an Excel spreadsheet with the titles of all my flannels.  Each entry has a spot for four possible themes.  For example, the entry 5 Red Apple has the themes: counting, animals, food, and Based on the book 10 red apples by Pat Hutchins.  Obviously not every entry has something in all four categories.  And, in many cases I could add more but I pick the four that are most obvious or are more useable for story time.

I try to update my spreadsheet at the end of each story time session.  We have four a year and that seems to work well for me.  During the sessions I stack any new flannels at the front of my drawer until they have a labeled envelope and are added to the spreadsheet.  I e-mail the spreadsheet to my co-workers every so often, just so they know what we've got (there are 4 of us doing story times).  I used to have a column for the last time I used a flannel story, but I also keep a story time theme spreadsheet with the books and songs I used each week, so I note the flannel story there.

Next up, flannel preservation:

Well, I am not sure how much preservation this really is, a little, but the envelopes are part of that too.  Basically, this part is my new glitter preservation trick.  I like to really like to amp up my foam pieces with glitter whenever possible (I think this stems from my dad's ban of all things glitter when I was a child).  Usually this means spreading a decent amount of glue around and shaking LOTS of glitter over top of it.  You can use the glitter glue, but I just don't think it has the same sparkle.  The upside is that my pieces stand out, are memorable, and often get an audible crowd reaction.  The downside: glitter EVERYWHERE.  My lovely co-workers do not complain about the trail I leave from the work room to the story time room, or the puddle that is left on our shared story time cart, or the chairs, or the desk...  But, they are rather polite, and, at the very least, it drives me nuts (partly because that means there is less glitter on the piece).

Recently I realized that if I spread a coat of Mod Podge over the glitter it will stop it from coming off everywhere and still allow the sparkle (I'm sure regular old glue could work too, but I have not tested that theory).  So, I coated all of my glittery pieces with one coat of Mod Podge and no more glitter trail!  Now, I can glitter to my heart's content and not worry that in a few years I will have to re-glitter my flannel boards.  **Be advised that the Mod Podge does leave a shiny sheen.  This does not matter when coating glitter, but if you goof and get it somewhere else that part will shine a bit when dried.  Though that could come in handy if you want something to look wet!**

Freshly Mod Podged piece

Dried piece; white goo turns to a clear and shiny top coat

Lots of glitter-ized at various stages of dry-ness

Now that you know how to organize and preserve your flannels, you need to go make some!  You can find this week's ideas with Mollie at What Happens in Storytime...  All things Flannel Friday related can be located at the Flannel Friday Blog and all posts are pinned to the boards on Pinterest.

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!) 

Flannel Friday: Bedtime for Monsters

The final week of our summer story times brought the theme of Things that go bump in the night.  What goes bump in the night?  Monsters!  I wanted some fresh ideas for this one since I did a friendly monster theme around Halloween.  Not that I don't love Big Green Monster, but new things are fun too.

I found a Flannel Friday post by Cate at Storytiming for a book called Bedtime little monsters by Emma Harris.  Cate gave the overall idea of the book, all of the monsters run and hide at bedtime and so a monster hunt ensues.  Unfortunately, we do not own a copy of the book and I had to request it from another library knowing there was a good chance it would not arrive by my story time.  (Have I mentioned I enjoy last minute planning?)  So, I went with the idea anyway and made it my own.

For my version of the story I placed an empty bed on the board and had several objects with monsters hidden behind them.  I told the kids that for our next story we had some monsters that were ready to go to bed, but they needed to hear a lullaby first.  We talked for a minute about good bedtime songs and settled on Twinkle, twinkle, little star.  Then, I turned to the board to sing the monsters to sleep only to discover that they were all missing!

I told the kids that the monsters were all hiding and we had to find them and put them in bed.  They would shout out an object that they saw a monster behind, I pulled the object away, and the kids would tell me what color the monster was.  Then, I said:

Time for monsters to rest their head,
Let's put the PURPLE monster to bed!

And we continued finding all of the monsters and repeating the rhyme according to the monster color until they were all in bed.  Then, we sang Twinkle, twinkle, little star and those rascally monsters finally fell asleep!

Ironically, the book arrived the morning of story time.  They gist of the story was the same, yet still rather different.  I had the monsters hiding in some of the same places.  I used many of the same places that Cate had.  I loved her shower curtain, so I made my own.  She had also asked for suggestions for more places and a cookie jar and trash can were brought up and I liked those ideas.  The dog, car, and couch are all pieces from other flannel boards.  I figured that my extensive collection gives the added bonus of reusing pieces for other stories.  Why make more if you don't really need to?

All of the pieces are craft foam except for the bed which is a foam frame with a flannel mattress and blanket so that the monsters would stick once inside.  The shower curtain was cut from a sandwich bag and decorated with Sharpies.  The dog, cookie jar, trash can, and monsters were all free handed and I used clip art as templates for the other shapes.

You can find this week's complete round-up with Kay at Storytime ABC's.  All things Flannel Friday can be found at the blog, or see all post visually arranged on the Pinterest boards.

Flannel Friday: Silly Super Hero

Week five brought super heroes flying into our library.  It is a very exciting theme, but posed a bit of a problem when it came to story time planning.  Books tend to be for older children and not great for reading to a crowd and flannel stories were few.  So....I made up my own.  This is a rather simple story.  You can modify it to meet your needs or style.  The story it a bit like Keiko Kasza's The pigs' picnic.  I call it:
The Best Super Hero Suit.

This is Ben.  Ben's favorite thing to do is play super hero.  He has lots of costumes, but today, Ben has a problem.  All of his costumes are in the wash.  What will he do?

Ben decided that he will make up his own costume and he is going to be the best super hero ever.  So, he thought, what makes a great super hero?  First, a super hero needs to be able to hear if someone is in trouble.  Ben found some nice, big ears.  (I had planned to ask the kids where Ben got the ears, but I had a rather enthusiastic little guy who shouted out 'Those are bunny ears!'  So, he got all the kids going and I didn't need to prompt them.  They kept it up the whole story.)

Bunny ears!

Next, Ben decided that a super hero should be able to smell if there is a fire so that he can rescue people from the flames.  Ben found a great, big nose.

Elephant nose!

Now, Ben thought, a good super hero is really, really, strong.  Ben found some very strong arms.

Gorilla arms!

Great super heroes can leap tall buildings thought Ben.  So, he found some extremely hoppy feet.

Frog feet!

Finally, Ben knew that all the best super heroes can fly, so, Ben found a pair of super flappy wings.

Bat wings!

Ben thought he was the greatest, best super hero ever.  He ran out into the living room to save his sister from evil villains.

'AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH a monster!!!!!!!!!'  screamed Ben's sister who ran crying to mommy.  And mommy made Ben take the costume off because his sister was so scared.

Oh well, thought Ben back in his room.  I can always be Captain Underpants instead!

You can find this week's round up with Katie at storytime katie.  All things Flannel Friday can be found at the Flannel Friday blog, or you can see all posts pinned to the Pinterest boards.

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).

Flannel-ish Friday: Rocket Away

I had every intention of creating a flannel board this week, but I realized I already had more than enough ideas for my story time, so I decided to make rockets for all of the kids instead.  We did an outer space theme and I came up with a few rocket songs to use.  I also decided that it would be fun to get out the parachute as my summer crowd has been much smaller and would fit around the parachute.

I made up rockets out of toilet paper tubes for all of the kids.  They really were not hard to make, just a tube, paper, some decorative tape, and colored crepe paper.  I thought about putting a cone top on all of them, but that seemed to be too much work, so instead I just cut small slits on each side of the tube and slid a triangle in.  The kids loved them!  I passed them out at the time when we usually do our flannel story (toward the end of story time) and we did a song with them.  I'm sure there are many similar versions, I made this one up, it goes 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!!!

As we started counting we crouched down with our rocket on the floor and then we shot them up into the air when we got to the 'blast off.'  We did this song a couple of times because they enjoyed it so much.

Next, I pulled out the parachute and had all of the kids throw their rockets in.  This was a bit hard at first because they did not want to part with them, but once they saw that we were going to shake the parachute and shoot them into the sky they were all for it.  We did this a few times.  I had planned to throw in some balls as planets, but there were some very enthusiastic shakers and we could barely get the rockets back in before they were flying out again.  When we were done they got to collect their rockets to take home (I replaced a few that came apart, but overall they held up well).

This summer we have been ending story time with the Teddy bear, teddy bear rhyme, but today we did a rocket rhyme.  I had written a second poem to do with the rockets, but we did not get to it during story time.  You do the appropriate motions as you say:

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!

I modified it to be a goodbye rhyme and we said:

Rockets up,
Rockets down,
Rockets zooming all around.


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


The kids really like this.  I even left the projector on after our movie so that they could see the shadow of their rockets on the screen.

You can find all of this week's round up with Miss Mary Liberry.  Past round ups  and all things Flannel Friday can be found at the website, or you can drool over the Pinterest page.