Snow fun at Story Time

This week we got back into the swing of things with Winter story times and boy was it swinging!  I had 26 kids registered for the class and then we had some drop in or tag along with the others.  I didn't get a good count, but 29 crafts were made so there were probably over 60 people packed into that story time room today!  Boy did it get hot, which is a little ironic as our books were all about snow.
The past few sessions I have some over arching theme from which I planned all of my story times.  Last fall we did colors, in winter and spring we had nursery rhymes, and just this fall each week featured a book from the New York Public Library list of 100 books everyone should know.  These broad themes really helped with planning for story times.  They gave me ideas for each week.  They weren't anything really new, ie. with the nursery rhyme Old Mother Hubbard we did books about dogs, but it helped me to pick the themes and plan for each week.  This session, we are just going week by week.  I had wanted a big theme, but when I sat down I found that I already had enough themes that I wanted to use.

 So, this week our theme was Snow featuring the letter S.  A nice, versatile theme to get us going again.  The first week of a session is always hard because some kids and parents are new and getting used to the format.  So, it tends to be a little crazy and wiggly.  This is also the week where I go over my 'guidelines' or rules so that takes a little extra time.  These are the guidelines that I give to the parents:

Welcome to Read to Me for 2’s and 3’s

This program is specifically designed for children 2 and 3 years old along with a caregiver.  Typically sessions last 25 minutes and are followed by a simple craft. 

Some guidelines to keep in mind:

·        -Please try to arrive on time.  If you are late, please enter the room as quietly as possible.

·        -Be a role-model for your child – they watch what you do, so please save all side conversations for craft time or in the play area after story time.  Your participation in songs and rhymes will encourage your child to join in too.

·        -Children this age are active and that is what we plan for, but please be mindful of others if your child is standing in front of other children or running disruptively around the room.  You are welcome to leave the room and return as needed.

·        -Please try to avoid giving your toddler food as this can be a big distraction for all the others.

·        -We like to do crafts and they can be messy.  We will try to provide you with notice if we will be using paint, but many other crafts may use glue, markers, or stamps.  Please keep this in mind when dressing for story time.

I very much stress that parents are a model for the kids.  I remind them that their children watch everything that they do and like to copy them, so if they sings songs and listen to the books the kids will see that and if they are chatting with friends their kids will copy that too :)  Anyway, after that little spiel, we did the Hello songs and Sparky (my dragon puppet) revealed the letter of the day.

Our first book was Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner.  This is a great book with rhyming text about why your snowman looks droopy after a day.  The story shows the snowmen enjoying all kinds of winter activities such as sledding, snowball fights, ice skating, and even baseball.  As usual, this was a crowd pleaser as the kids enjoyed seeing the snowmen do things that they do in winter.

The other book we read was Lois Ehlert's Snowballs.  This is another snowman book.   In classic Ehlert collage she shows a creative snow family, pets included!  I like to show the last few pages where she spreads out the items she uses so we can talk about how the pictures were made.

This weeks flannel was another favorite of mine, 5 snowmen fat.  This had the Family night kids in fits of giggles because each time you say the word fat you puff out your cheeks and then push the air out with your hands.  I made a flannel board with 'melting snowmen' that you can read about here.  The rhyme goes:
Five snowmen fat.
Each with a black top hat.
Out came the sun and melted one,
Down, down, down.
Four snowmen fat!
Then repeat with 4, 3, 2, 1 until there are 'no snowmen fat!'

 We also did a quick puppet story.  We have a snowman puppet with a removable nose and a rabbit puppet.  I like to get the snowman out without his nose and ask the kids what might make a good nose.  One day I would like to make him some other options, like a celery stick, button, etc, just for fun.  After we get his nose on, the bunny comes along and we do the rhyme:
A chubby little snowman had a carrot nose.
Along came a bunny and what do you suppose?
The hungry little bunny, looking for some lunch,
Ate the snowman's carrot nose, nibble, nibble, crunch!

 The bunny takes the nose and then we talk about how it is not nice to take things from others and we nicely ask the bunny to put it back (he won't even try until you say please).  Then, the silly bunny doesn't know where the nose goes and tries it on the snowman's head, arm, toes, etc.  I do this for as long as the kids seem entertained.  Then, to show the bunny they all point to their own nose and he finally gets it right.

Our songs this week were semi winter themed.  We got out the bells for Carole Peterson's Ring those bells.  You ring the bells and turn around, stomp your feet, jump up and down for winter.  We also did another Carole Peterson song, Tommy Thumb is up.  This is a good fingerplay song and you can do it sitting as a settle down activity.

Our final song of the day was Laurie Berkner's I feel crazy so I jump in my soup.  Not quite winter, but soup is a nice warm treat in the winter.  We jumped, swam, splashed, and sat in our soup to end story time.


This week's craft was a super cute snowman that I found on Pinterest (a very addictive website but great for craft, recipe, decor, DIY ideas, or any other thing you can think of).  Here is a link to the one I saw, and below is a picture of the one that I made.

Flannel Friday: Two Shoes in One

Somehow I missed the fact that this week everyone else is posting mushy love flannels - oops!  But, bonus with a theme about something that I do love ... I have two shoe themed story times in one post!  One thing that I try to do whenever possible is to re-use my foamie pieces for other stories.  So, here is an example of where that works well.

The first story is one that I found a few years ago.  The story is called The case of the missing shoe by Jean Feldman.  This is an easy one to remember since you have all of the pieces there to look at.  Basically, you got up in the morning and wanted to wear your blue shoes, but alas, you can only find one.  So, you begin to search.  You look under the sink, nope, it is a shoe of pink.  Under the bed?  No, a shoe of red.  This is good for rhyming if the kids are old enough to guess what color the shoe will be.  Or the little ones can shout out the color as you reveal it.  You can find the whole poem/story here or in Jean Feldman's book Transition tips and tricks for teachers.

As you can see I made a card with a picture of what the shoe was hiding under and then put the appropriate colored shoe behind the card.  All have velcro on the back so they stay up.  I have the cards on the board in order of the poem, so no need to memorize or use a cheat sheet :)

My second shoe story is from a book that I LOVE LOVE LOVE (one of the best story time books - at least in my humble opinion).  I have seen Pete the Cat by Eric Litwin on Flannel Friday many times, but here is my version anyway.  I re-used the shoes from the previous story for this flannel, so there was less to make.  I printed off pictures of what Pete was stepping in so the kids could help me tell the story.  I even extended it once and had Pete step in oranges, jello, etc. to get shoes of orange, yellow, green, whatever else we felt like.  I love this book.  We have used it for shoes, colors, even a USA theme since Pete is so Rock 'n Roll.  One of these days I'm going to do an all singing story time ... someday...

Advice for the Newbies

I realized today that I have now been doing story times for 5 years.  Thankfully, in that 5 years my story time skills have much improved.  I remember my first story time, I read 4 books and had hardly any songs.  I'm opretty sure that it was awful for anyone in attendance.  Luckily, I have learned quite a bit since then and I felt that I should share some of those things.

First, observe many different story times.  I only saw 2 people do story times, and while that hepled I think I could really have benefitted by seeing more.  When I did my first story time I held a degree in marketing, had coached middle school track and had limited work experience outside of the restaurant industry.  Not much of that perpared me for planning and perfroming story times for preschoolers.  Before my first story time I felt like I was being thrown off a dock and told to swim with no lessons.  (I should mention that my co-workers were really helpful with anything that I needed, but having never done anything like a story time before I was terrified.)  But, also know that everyone has a different style and it may take a few tries to find yours.  Copying something you see but aren't comforatable doing (ie. using a puppet, or doing character voices) will not go well.  You need to be yourself (they hired you for a reason).

Second, be over prepared.  Make sure that you have read your books several times so you know the story.  This will help you be able to look away from the book and at your audience from time to time.  Also, if you are doing a flannel story do not memorize it word for word.  That makes it difficult if you miss something.  Just know the story very well so that you can retell it in your own words.  Know the songs that you plan to sing and be comfortable with the motions for fingerplays.  Have an extra song, fingerplay, or flannel story on hand so that if you need to fill some time you are ready.  Or, if you notice that your audience is getting too fidgety, you can ditch the last book and do a few songs instead.  And, songs like Head, shoulders, knees and toes are always great to pull out if you have to.  I use an ipod for songs during story time and I usually add at least one extra just in case we have a wiggly day.

Third, pick books that you enjoy reading.  If you are reading something that you aren't really into, the kids pick up on that.  But, if you like the story you will read with more enthusiasm and the kids will be more interested.

Fourth, don't be afraid of those parents!  I'll admit, I was.  I was terrified of looking silly to the parents that came.  But, you know what, they are there for their kids and they totally understand that acting silly entertains kids.  I try to involve the parents as much as possible.  If we have a book that repeats a phrase I will have the audience help me with it (since 2 year olds aren't the best at this the parents have to help them.)  For many of the songs I will print out the words so they can sing along.  I even hand out a sheet with all the songs and any words they can join in with.

Fifth, don't be afraid to abandon a book.  Sometimes a book you think will really go over well just flops.  It happens.  If that happens, just say something like, 'it seems like this book is not one of your favorites.  Why don't we move on, and those of you who are interested can check it out and find out what happens at home.'  I have also done this with a video.  (For my family story times we end with a Scholastic video of an animated book.)

Finally, learn to be flexible.  When you are working with preschoolers ANYTHING can happen.  I have had kids pee on the floor, fire alarms go off, babies crying, toddlers steal my flannel pieces, you just have to go with the flow.  The most common thing is kids interuppting, but that is probably because they are paying attention to you.  Whatever you read sparked something in them and thry just can't contain it.  I have found that it is best to listen and then steer eveyone back to the story.

And very lastly, never be afraid to ask for help or ideas.  There are lots of resources out there and plenty of Children's librarians eager to share what has worked well for them.  Two of my favorite resources are PUBYAC - an e-mail list serv for children's librarians to share ideas and post questions (visit PUBYAC.org to sign-up) and Flannel Friday - a group of Children's librarians that post flannel stories on Fridays (visit the Pinterest page for a listing of all the post or the group's Facebook page here. 

Sick Day

Since I have been sick  the last day or so I feel it is appropriate to finally post my Sick Day story time.  Our letter of the day was S for Sick Day and the featured NYPL list book was The Napping House.  I have to say, when you ask kids if they have been sick you get some interesting stories.  Of course, when I ask them about being sick I mention they probably aren't sick today because then they would not be at story time :)  This year, I had one lovely little girl talk about how she got sick and puked all over.  I have to admit that this child was my daughter and after story time one mother (who knew she was my daughter) told me she was impressed with how straight faced I was when I replied 'that must have been awful.'  Because, of course all I could think of was how awful it was to deal with!  Sickening, huh?

Anyway, our first story of the day was initially Llama llama home with mama by Anna Dewdney.  I thought that this was such a sweet story and I always love Llama books.  Little red nosed llama is so adorable with his tissue pile.  The kids however were not so keen on the story.  I think it just got a little long.


Our featured book was Audrey Wood's The Napping House.  I love the pictures in this book.  I had thought about making it a flannel story, but then you would lose the great expressions of the animals and child as they are woken up.  Since this one can get a little long as well, I had everyone whisper 'shhhhh' after the phrase 'in a napping house.'  This worked really well and kept both the kids and the adults quietly listening.

The final story was Karen Winnick's Barn Sneeze.  This is always a fun story with animal sound sneezes.  It is a good one to involve the audience as you can have them guess how different animals will sneeze.  Plus, it is simple and fairly short, with great illustrations so you don't lose those little ones with short attention spans.

We had a few songs about being sick.  One was If you are sick and you know it.  This goes along to If you are happy and you know it.

If you are sick and you know it give a cough,

If you are sick and you know it give a cough,

If you are sick and you know then you really want to show it,

If you are sick and you know it give a cough.

Repeat with:

Give a sneeze

Take a nap

Cry a lot

I also made a flannel board to go along with the song 5 in the bed.  The song goes:

There were 5 in the bed and the little one said,

‘Roll over, roll over’

So they all rolled over and one fell out…

Repeat with: There were 4, 3, 2,

There was 1 in the bed and that little one said,

‘I’m lonely!’

I designed the flannel board so that the bears would move over.  You can read more about it here.  They didn't fall out as I had hoped, but they at least moved.

We also had some other songs.  We sang Hap Palmer's Head, shoulders, knees, and toes.  This is a good versoin as it is fairly slow so those just learning it can keep up.  Hap even has it broken up so you are only doig a few motions at a time.

I like my hat by Carole Peterson had little to do with being sick, other than the fact that you may get sick if you don't wear your hat (big stretch, but I like the song!)  We use the scarves as our hats and this song always gets some giggles.

In addition we sang Hap Palmer's Five little monkeys.  This is a great movement song and that mama has to call the doctor a few times, so it related nicely enough.

Our craft was a boat made from soap.  I couldn't find much I liked for being sick, so I decided to promote hand washing to avoid being sick.  I found the idea at CraftyNoodle.  This was a really easy craft.  I gave all the kids a small skewer and that slid right into a bar of Ivory soap (supposedly the only one that floats).  Then, they taped a cardstock sail that they could color onto the stick and that was it!       

Holiday Family Story Time

I have to say that the Holiday story time is the one that I dread most each year.  Mostly because I worry SO much about offending someone.  Also because we get such a wide range of kids and I never know how many to plan for.  Plus, it is on a Tuesday night near the holidays and there can be so many other things going on.  So, this year I went with what seemed fun, and I think it worked out well.

We had about 75 people attend this year's holiday time.  The only other time we had more was when the Grinch made an appearance.  It was crazy, but it seemed that most people had a good time.

I started with the song 'If it's Christmas and you know it.'  We sang:
If it's Christmas and you know it clap your hands,
If it's Christmas and you know it clap your hands,
If it's Christmas and you know it then you really want to show it,
If it's Christmas and you know it clap your hands.
We repeated with:
Shouting Hooray
Jumping up and down

After the fact I think that we needed to do another song.  Lots of people came in late and it really seemed to disrupt our first book which was If you take a mouse to the movies by Laura Numeroff.  These books are generally crowd pleasers, but with people coming in late and taking off coats many kids were distracted.  There were also quite a few who said they had this book at home.  I tried to get them to read along with me, but instead they observed the late comers.

The second story went over much better.  I did my Crazy, confused Christmas that I wrote for last weeks Flannel Friday.  You can read the story here.  They really liked this one.  I kept turning the tree wrong as they yelled how to put it.  I drug that out for awhile, but they were happily trying to correct me.  They also really liked the crazy trees and seemed to enjoy yelling that the tree was wrong.

The last book I read was David Shannon's It's Christmas, David!  They LOVED this book.  I think both the parents and kids could relate to this one.  I was a little worried about the page where he pees his name in the snow, but I could hear parents laughing and telling their kids what David had done.

Christmas songs with action were very hard to find.  I think that I may need to go write some.  I found enough for my program, but none were super exciting.  And the best action songs were not from cds so we had no background music.  I found a version of We wish you a Merry Christmas from PreschoolEducation.com here that goes:

We wish you a Merry Christmas
We wish you a Merry Christmas
We wish you a Merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year.

Repeat with:
Now let's all do a little clapping…

Now let's all do a little jumping …

Now let's all do a little waving…

From a great Flannel Friday blog I got a song called Santa had a Christmas Tree.  You can find the original post at Abby the Librarian.  I was really excited because the flannels for this song fit great with the tree I had already made for the Crazy, confused Christmas story.  The tree already had the star and lights, so I added a bell, presents, and cookies.  The song goes to the tune of Old MacDonald:

Santa had a Christmas tree
Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho
And on that tree he had a star
Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho
With a twinkle, twinkle here
And a twinkle, twinkle there
Here a twinkle, there a twinkle
Everywhere a twinkle, twinkle
Santa had a Christmas tree
Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho!

Repeat with:
On that tree he had a light... with a sparkle, sparkle here

On that tree he had a bell... with a jingle, jingle here

Under his tree he had a gift... with a rattle, rattle here
Next to his tree he had some cookies…with a crunch

crunch, here

We did break out the bells to sing Jingle Bell Rock.  I used the Sugar Beats version on the Sugar Beats Christmas album.  That seemed to go well.  I told them to shake their bells up, down, around, whatever as we danced to the song.
We ended with the Reindeer Pokey that I also found at PreschoolEducation.com.  (It is on the same page as the link above for the We wish you a Merry Christmas song.)  To do the 'Reindeer Pokey' we made antlers on our head as we spun around.

Since this was a more special program I ended with a viewing of Super Why's T'was the Night Before Christmas.  This show is great for pre-reading skills so I figured that it fit well with story time.  I set up three crafts in a different area of the library so people had the choice of staying for the movie or just doing the crafts.  Not many stayed for the movie which was disappointing.  Last year I showed the Charlie Brown Christmas and only a few watched that, so I thought I would go less traditional this year.  It worked at Halloween with Word World, oh well.

I had three crafts I put out.  The first two I found pictures of by googling images of Christmas crafts.  The third is a version of something we did in the past.

Flannel Friday: A Crazy, Confused Christmas

So, this week I ended up writing my own Flannel Story.  I just wasn't finding much that I really wanted to 'flannelize' for a holiday story time, so I made up my own.  It is just a silly story - kind of Dumb Bunnies-ish - about a family that has a little trouble decorating the Christmas tree.

Feel free to change the script to fit your needs.  I am not for memorizing stories.  I find that it is just too hard to memorize a script word for word.  If you mess up any word you get lost, tongue-tied, blank out, whatever.  My advice, and what I do, is to know the story really well and then ad-lib as you go.  This also allows you to play to the crowd, or not if they aren't going for that.  I will repeat a refrain if it is relevant, but in general I just make sure I know the story and put all the flannel pieces in the order needed to be my prompts.  Ok, end of advice, here is my story:

It is finally December and time for the Dippies to put up the tree.  Father Dippie brought it up from the basement and proudly set it up in the living room.

'Oh dear,' said Mother Dippie, 'something is not quite right.'
So, Father Dippe twisted and turned, as set the tree up again.

'Hmmm, still not quite right,' said Mother Dippie.
So, Father Dippie twisted and turned some more and...

 I forgot to take a picture of the upright, bare tree, but I'm sure you get the idea of what it should look like here ;)

 

'Just right!' said Mother Dippie.  'Now, we must decorate the tree!  Who has the ornament box?'
'I do!' said Sister Dippie.  And she quickly decorated the tree.

'Oh my,' said Mother Dippie, 'something is not quite right.'
'I'll fix it,' said Brother Dippie.  And he took off the socks and re-decorated the tree.

'Good grief!' cried Mother Dippie.  'Not your briefs, we need the fancy Christmas balls.'
'I'll get them,' said Father Dippie.  He removed the underpants and put up the balls.

'Hmmm,' said Mother Dippie, 'something is still not quite right.  Santa will want to play if he sees that tree.'
'Santa!' Brother and Sister exclaimed.  They rushed off and came back to decorate the tree once more.

'Well, said Mother Dippie, 'that does look more festive, but something is not quite right.'  The family put their heads together, searched the house, and finally finished the tree.

'It's beautiful,' the all agreed.  'But,' said Mother Dippie, 'something is still, not quite right.  The tree needs light!'  So, the Dippies, clapped, and clapped their hands.  (Clap your hands.)  Nothing happened, so the clapped some more.  (Clap again.)  Still nothing happened.  They need your help.  Clap as loudly as you can.  Clap, clap.  Then...

'Yay!!!!!' cried the Dippies.  'The perfect tree at last.'
'But you know,' said Brother Dippie, 'I like this tree best of all!'

The green tree is made from craft foam and then I used transparency sheets to lay on top of the tree.  There is a pieces of fuzzy velcro at the top of the tree and a 'sticky' pieces on the back of each transparency sheet.  I made sure that they were hidden by the tree topper.

Also, the 'final' tree has a strand of lights that light up.  I found these at Hobby Lobby, but I am sure you could find them many places.  It is meant to be a necklace and I bought them to put on t-shirts for my kids.  So. I borrowed one for story time.  If you can't find one, you could just leave off the clapping part, or have them clap at the success of the Dippies.

Can you tell that I need to do laundry at my house?  The sock tree (and probably the whole story) was actually inspired by my kids who put their socks on my Christmas tree this week.  Ironically they were Christmas socks, but they were also used socks.  The good news is that I am officially done with my MLIS coursework and I get to graduate!  YAY!!!!!!!  (I just got the e-mail from my advisor today so I am a bit giddy.)  So, now there will be more time for laundry.

If you are looking for this week's Holiday Flannel Extravaganza, you can find it at Loons and Quines.  Past Round-Ups are at SoTomorrow, or you can click the Flannel Friday button to the right to see all the posts on Pinterest.

Flannel Friday: 5 Hungry Ants

Since I still have food on the brain after yesterday's feasting, I give you one of my favorite food related flannel stories: 5 Hungry Ants.  I think that I first came across this several years ago on a PUBYAC post, but I have seen it many different places.  The rhyme goes:
5 hungry ants, marching in a line
Came across a picnic where they thought that they could dine.
They marched into the salad,
They marched into the cake,
They marched into the pepper, uh-oh, that was a mistake.
Aaah-Aaah-Aaah-Choooo!

And of course the Aaah-chooing is very exaggerated and I throw one of the ants off of the board.  The kids and parents love this one.  I think I did it every week a few summers ago when the Summer Reading theme was bugs.  I thought that they would get sick of it but every time I pulled them out I could hear excited murmurs.

If you are looking for an archive of Flannel Friday round-ups you can visit here or if you just want this week's round-up you can go here.  If you want to see them all together on a highly addictive web-site you can click on the Flannel Friday button to the right.