Fall into Storytime

For the third week of storytime our theme was Autumn, featuring the letter A.  This is one of those themes that is an easy pick and has lots of book options.  I went more for books about leaves in general, but as you will see one of the books featured all the activities of autumn.  I introduced the theme by talking about what the kids saw happening to the leaves on the trees and asking what colors they were seeing.  We also talked about seasons and the order that they go.

Our first book was Lois Ehlert's Leaf Man.  This is a book that I have read before and Ehlert's books are generally well received in storytimes, bit for some reason this years groups were not big fans of Leaf Man.  The pictures are great, made from collages of real leaves in Ehlert's signature style.  Maybe it was the story where they lost it a bit.  At one point I had a little boy ask 'when will this book end?'  I guess even tried and true these days is not reliable.

The second book we read was Let it Fall by Maryann Cocca-Leffler.  This is a nice simple book about different activities that you can do in the fall.  It shows a cute, cartoon family raking leaves, going to a fair, looking at pumpkins, hiking, celebrating Thanksgiving, and finally getting ready for winter.  It was a little early for the Thanksgiving and winter part of it, but 2 year olds don't really care and it helps to work on the order of the seasons.

Our flannel board was Marty Kelley's Fall is not easy.  This is a really cute story about a tree who just can't seem to get the hang of changing leaves.  Winter is easy, there are no leaves.  Spring and summer are easy, they bud and turn green.  But fall?  Not easy.  The book depicts a myriad of bizarre looking leaves such as rainbow, cow, a smiley face, stripes, and even an Eat at Joe's sign.  The kids loved the cray trees and the giggles got louder as the story went on.

Johnette Downing's Shake your scarves is a great song to use with a fall/leaves theme.  The scarves are great for mimicking the falling leaves and the song has an upbeat tune.

I brought back Tommy Thumb by Carole Peterson as many kids missed doing it the week before.  This is a great 'lap' song for getting kids calmed down before reading a story.  And I like that she does not use all the fingers, keeping to the ones that are easier for little kids to do themselves.

We sang Row, row, row your boat by The Old Town School of Funk.  I love this version of this song.  I have even used it with the baby groups because the parents can do the motions with the kids on their laps.  In the song you row, bounce, sway, wiggle, and tickle in your boat.

Additionally we sang Hap Palmer's version of Five Little Monkeys.  I use this one a lot as well.  The monkey jump on the bed, bounce on the bed, and spin on the bed before getting the idea to go and jump outside.  Mama and the Doctor can't complain about monkeys playing outside!

    Our craft was a tissue paper tree that I have seen many places.  The kids get a white circle of cardstock to which they glue pieces of tissue paper.  Then, they slide the cardstock into slits cut at the top of a toilet paper roll to make a tree.  But, I added a little twist and gave the kids a second cardstock circle and some paint stampers so that they could make a tree like the book Fall is not easy.  Many of them had two bizarre trees.

 

Flannel Friday: Garbage Trucks

This week our story time theme was Garbage trucks.  My grand plan was to make a flannel board where we would sort trash by color into a matching garbage truck.  But, we had really great weather over the weekend so my yard got the attention that my flannel board did not.  Instead I showed the movie version of the book I Stink! by Kate and Jim McMullen.  (The kids and parents seemed to enjoy that special surprise.)

I did get the garbage trucks themselves made, so in the future I may print off photos of garbage in different colors, or use them to sort recycling items.  For recycling we could have plastic, glass, compost, and paper.  You could also have colored paper scattered around the room and have the kids pick it up and bring it to one of the trucks which could be taped to a box so the kids can put the paper in the box.

I also had a rhyme for my garbage trucks.  It goes:

Garbage trucks, garbage trucks,
Cleaning up the town.
Do you see any garbage lying around?
Pick up the trash and match it to a truck,
Soon the whole town will be all cleaned up.

There are also some great garbage truck ideas at Awesome Storytime and Read, Sarah, Read.  I drew inspiration from both of these great 'Stinky / Garbage' storytime posts.

This week's round-up is with Mollie at What Happens In Storytime.  The posts will also be pinned to the Pinterest boards and all things Flannel Friday can be found on the Flannel Friday Blog.

Flannel Friday: Fair Food

This week's post was totally stolen from Ms. Monica at Ram Sam Storytime.  (Thanks for the inspiration!)  A few weeks ago she posted a food on a stick flannel rhyme and I instantly loved it.  When I read her rhyme it for some reason brought to mind the song Animal fair, so I modified her rhyme to fit the song.  We sang:

(To the tune of Animal Fair)

I went to the county fair.
The pigs and the sheep were there.
When food I demanded,
We went to a stand,
And got _____ on a stick to share.

The song is kind of catchy. By the second or third round most of the kids were singing along with me. 

As we sang I would use my stick to prop up the food that we were using for that verse.  This worked really well.  We have several puppets that have sticks to move their arms around.  The stick has the soft side of velcro at the top to help hold it in place in a pocket at the bottom of the puppet's hand.  So, I placed the rougher side on the back of my pieces and just slapped the stick down on each piece as we sang.  You could easily make this device with any stick-like object.  And, if you are like us, you have quite a bit of that soft side of velcro floating around.

Some of the 'normal' food on a stick options.

I had all the pieces piled in the order I wanted so I could just slap them on quickly.

I added some things to make the song a bit silly.  This is one of those times when it is great to have a stock pile of flannel boards as I could just pull pieces from various sets to use in the song.  Very easy to do and saves time and energy for other projects.  I like to borrow pieces whenever I can.  This is one reason I try to do most of my sets with craft foam so that they are all similar.

Some of the more outrageous food on a stick options.  Lion on a stick anyone?

You can find all of this week's posts with one of the other flanneling Sarahs at Read, Sarah, Read! or you can visit the New This Week board on Pinterest.  If you have any questions about Flannel Friday you can find all sorts of information at the Flannel Friday blog - or just ask me or any of the other participants, we're happy to share!

A day at the Fair

Week 2 of fall story times brought the fun of fairs into the library.  However, due to life stuff, I only got to do one of my usual four story times.  Thankfully my wonderful co-workers were able to step in for me, but I don't feel that I performed the books and songs enough to have a good idea of how they all went over with the kids.  The only story time that I did was my Tuesday evening story time and those kids are always well behaved and receptive - partly because they tend to be a little older (4 - 5) and partly because they and their parents are awesome.  So, whatever I do on Tuesday nights seems to go well.

Anyway, our theme for week 2 was the Fair featuring the letter F.  This theme was very much inspired by Ms. Monica at Ram Sam Story Time who posted a flannel board about food on a stick.  Being a fan of food on a stick I knew instantly that this was a theme I wanted to use.

Our first book was I know a wee piggy by Kim Norman.  This is a cute story about a piggy who runs hog-wild all around the fair.  At each stop piggy acquires a new form of color, be it mud, paint, clay, cotton candy, this piggy becomes a mess!  The story is actually cumulative like I know and old lady, but I skipped the accumulating verse on each page and the rhyme still worked really well and left the story short enough to keep the attention of young children. 

The second book that we read was Janet Morgan Stoeke's Minerva Lousie at the fair.  I changed this book from a different one for the Tuesday evening crowd because it has some silliness that might be above the realms of a 2 or 3 year old.  Minerva is spending the night on her farm when she is drawn by some bright lights down to the local fair.  She gets rather confused by all of the fair stuff, she thinks the ferris wheel is an odd bulldozer, the carousel a horse barn, and the rabbit hutches.  The older kids were able to pick up on Minerva's mistakes making the book fun of the older kids.

Our flannel story was modified from Ram Sam Story Time.  Ms. Monica created a rhyme for her flannel board that I discovered could by sung with a little tweaking.  You can read her original version here.  I modified it to be sung to the tune of Animal Fair.  It goes:

I went to the county fair.
The pigs and the sheep were there.
When food I demanded,
We went to a stand
And got ______ on a stick to share!

Then I would whip out various foods on my stick to insert into the song.  Some were foods that could work, some were silly foods, and some weren't foods at all!  You can read more about my version here.

We used some fun songs in between our books.  Mr. Eric and Mr. Michael have one called Wiggledy Woo where you do a lot of wiggling.

Carole Peterson has a great finger play song called Tommy Thumb is up.  It is a twist on Where it thumbkin but uses the easier thumb, pointer, and baby fingers before getting all of the fingers into the mix.

We pulled out the shaker eggs for Angela Russ's Shake your boom boom.  This is a fun, upbeat shaker song.  She notes that you can use anything for a boom boom, I like shaker eggs.  We may be getting some boom whackers, so that could be fun with this song.

Sue Schnitzer's All the fish is a very popular song with the 2 and 3 year old set.  So much so that many of my friends have 2 year old kids who walk around singing it thanks to our church's Sunday school.

Because all of the Fair themed crafts that I could find were far beyond what I deem appropriate for story time I decided to have the kids make their own puppet show for the Three Little Pigs.  Pigs are a big part of the fair, so this isn't too far of a stretch, right?  The craft was basic, each kid had 3 pigs, 3 houses, and 1 wolf to color.  They got a stick for each pig and wolf and then the houses were attached to a cut paper bag.  This way as they told the story they could turn from house to house.  If you set the bag on a flat surface you could also have the wolf blow it away.  And, added bonus for the parents, all the puppet pieces could be carried home in the bag.  I was also able to put all the pieces into the bag before story time so they were ready to go drafts.  Also, I put some sheets with the story printed out on the craft tables just in case someone need it.

Dragons in Story Time

So, we are already in the fourth week of this sessions story time and I am just now getting around to posting about the first week of story time.  That's what happens when real life hits, blogging falls to the back burner.

 Anyway, for our first week of story time this fall I wanted to feature dragons so that I could introduce my dragon puppet, Sparky.  Sparky actually started doing story time with me last fall, but there are lots of new two year olds who have not met him.  So, we did a dragon themed story time with the letter D for Dragon.

The first week is always a little hectic, I lay out a few guidelines (such as keep all adult conversation for after story time because we are role models for our children) and that takes up a little time at the beginning.  I also introduce myself and give a little overview of how a typical story time goes so that they know what to expect.

After all that housekeeping we read our first dragon book Me and my dragon by David Biedrzycki.  This is a cute story about a boy who wants a fire breathing dragon for a pet.  He talks about all of the fun things that he would do with his dragon and throws in a few funny anecdotes (like why feeding broccoli to a fire-breathing dragon is bad).  Before reading this book we talked about pets and what would be a good pet..lion?...puppy?...elephant?  And then everyone yelled what they have at home as pets.  No dragons though...

Our second book was James Mayhew's Who wants a dragon?  This is the story of a sweet little baby dragon who just wants someone to love him.  Trouble is, most people in the kingdom are afraid of him.  Luckily, baby dragon finds someone who will love him.  The dragon in this book is very cute and not at all scary.

For our final story I took Eric Kimmel's I took my frog to the library and I dragon-ized it.  You can read all about it here.  Basically, I wanted to talk about good library behavior and use dragons.  So, I had dragons that brought different forms of havoc to the library - such as knocking down books with their tails, making messes they didn't clean up, ruining books, and even setting fire to the librarians hair!  

Since dragons songs are on my list of 'what children's artists need to sing more action songs about' (I admit it is a very wishful list) we did some monster and dinosaur songs instead.  Laurie Berkner's We are the dinosaurs is always a very popular song with my story time crowd.  Many know it already and that seems to make it all the more fun.

My new favorite artists Mr. Eric and Mr. Micheal have a song called We are monsters on their Bouncy Blue album.  This is a fun song that involves lots of roaring.  (Warning - it did make one little girl cry, but all the rest has SO much fun that I will keep it in the rotation.)

We also pulled out the shaker eggs for Shakable you, a super fun song by the Imagination Movers.  You shake different parts of your body then you shake and jump!  This turns into a what looks like a toddler rock concert.  I can only imagine what the people walking by my story time think we are doing at the library.

Our craft was a fire breathing dragon.  I found the idea at the KangarooBoo blog.  I modified it a little.  For the eyes I cut a slit near the bottom of the cup and the kids could slide the circles into that.  They also had stickers for the eye balls.  The 'fire' is crepe paper stuck on with double sided tape.  I poked holes in the bottom of the cup and they put a straw (cut in half) into it.  They loved that the dragon actually blew out fire.  It worked really well if you tucked the crepe paper into the cup before blowing.
 

Flannel Friday: I took my Dragon to the library

Fall story times are almost here and I managed to get my first week's flannel story done over 2 weeks before we start!  Yay for non-procratination, it is a rare feat for me.  Anyways, for the first week of story time I wanted to feature dragons so that I can introduce my puppet friend Sparky.  Sparky is a quiet dragon, he talks in whispers to me and not out loud.  He helps in story time by 'revealing' the letter of the day (very Vana White of him).  He also collects name tags at the end of story time.  Sparky only eats name tags, if you feed him anything else he will spit it out with a loud 'Blegh!' and get lots of giggles.  He has been fed many craft projects as a result.

In addition to my Sparky introductions I wanted to do a little about the library so we can tie in some conversation about story time behavior and library services.  I have always loved Eric Kimmel's book I took my frog to the library for introducing library themes, so I re-made the story and filled it with dragons.  Thus, I took my dragon to the library!  (The title just screams trouble!)

My dragons really love to read, so, I decided to take them to the library.  They can be a handful, so I took them one at a time.  On Monday, I took my Purple Dragon to the library.  My Purple Dragon loves books, but her long claws kept poking holes in them.

 On Tuesday I took my Red Dragon to the library.  My Red Dragon was really excited to check-out some DVD's, but his big teeth made all of the babies cry and we had to go home.

On Wednesday I took my Pink Dragon to the library.  She went right over to the picture books and started reading.  But, she left lots of shiny scales behind and made a big mess.

On Thursday I took my Blue Dragon to the library.  My Blue Dragon has a very long tail and when he ran too fast around the library he bumped into people and knocked shelves over.  He had to run home.

On Friday I took my Yellow Dragon to the library.  My Yellow Dragon loves story time, but she has really big wings and they blocked all of the other kids from seeing the books.  She also talked so much that no one could hear the librarian read.

On Saturday I took my Green Dragon to the library.  My Green Dragon is very well behaved.  He handled the books gently, he smiled nicely at the babies, he cleaned up his messes, he walked carefully around the library, and he sat quietly in story time.  But, my Green Dragon has allergies and he sneezed and caught the librarian's hair on fire!

The nice people at the library told me that I can come visit whenever I want, but from now on my dragons all have to stay at home.  My dragons don't mind because I bring all of their favorite books and movies home to them.  Except my Green Dragon, I can't afford to let him set and library books on fire.

My dragons and most other pieces are made from craft foam.  I found a cute clip art image that I used for the shape of the dragons and free handed the rest.  The librarian's hair is yarn that I really did light on fire (at home, not in the library!)

The flannel round-up may be found this week at Loons and Quines @ Library Time.  Past round-ups and future round-up locations can be found at the Flannel Friday blog along with lots of other goodies.  All posts are arranged on the Pinterest boards.  Check out the newest board that features the pins just from this week.

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.