Moooving pastures.

I have allowed this to fall by the wayside, but for good reason; library life got BUSY.

However, it’s about to get even more so!

 

I will begin a new job at a new library very soon where I will focus on Teen and YA programming.

I. Am. Thrilled.

I grew up in a library with a librarian mother and even with that, by the time I because a tween/teen, I noticed that the library was no longer the exciting magical place it had been and was slowly becoming lackluster. There simply weren’t offerings for a patron my age. I wanted to keep visiting the library, I wanted to still love it, but it wasn’t making it easy for me.

I thought, I can only imagine how hard it must be for teens who didn’t grow up so attached and for the library to bring them in because, why? What was there to convince them?

Ever since then I decided to make it my mission to work on better offerings for teens through libraries.
I’ve worked in both adult and youth services, but never teen…until now. I’ll be starting as a YA services specialist in a couple weeks and will focus on programming and outreach for teens which is, like, basically my dream, so, yeah, you could say I’m looking forward to it.

 

 

I’m so excited and hope that my efforts will make a difference for at least a few young patrons.

I can’t wait to see what I have to write about next, I envision it’ll be something along these lines:

 

see what I did there?

Teen Titans Go! because, yay teens, and batgirl…cuz….she’s a librarian…. and hilarious montage because that essentially sums up my life.

Likely my upcoming experiences will be more like what I just wrote; me explaining my lame jokes and puns to people way cooler than me.

BRING IT ON.

 

muncha muncha muncha

I started off our food themed storytime with a good old classic, “If you give a mouse a cookie” by Laura Joffe Numeroff. I feel like no matter how many times I’ve read this, or the kids have read it, it’s enjoyed thoroughly, and that was absolutely the case with both my sessions this week.

After our first story, we did our first rhyme,  5 Hungry Ants. As always, I do it slowly the first time so that I can get a good rhythm and so that the kids (and adults) can watch first and learn then we go faster for round 2. Besides, repetition actually helps neurological development! yay!

5 Hungry ants

5 Hungry ants, marching in a line (march fingers)
came upon a picnic where they could dine (put had to brow searching, then rub tummy)
They marched into the salad (march in place)
they marched onto the cake (march in place)
They marched into the pepper (march in place)
Uh oh, that was a mistake!

AHHH-CHOO! 

I loved this rhyme! True fact: kids think it’s hilarious when you sneeze in storytime. Hiccups are also good.

 

Up next was the good old classic, Very hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. It’s kind of a weird book to read in storytime because of the physical challenges of holding  those weird short pages, but it’s worth it. 🙂 I like to read this one as if I can’t imagine that the caterpillar could possibly eat any more and feign surprise with each page turn. The kids are always like” pfft, obviously he’s going to keep eating, Miss Colleen, don’t be silly.”

Up next was rhyme two, Go Bananas! I thought this would be great because when you tell the kids to go bananas they can go crazy and wiggle and dance and whatever but for some reason this rhyme totally flopped at the go bananas part, in BOTH sessions! oh well.

Go Bananas!

Bananas Unite! (clap hands above head)
We pick bananas, pick pick bananas(do a “milking” motion up and down in the air)
And peel bananas, peel peel bananas (hands spread to side-right and left alternating)
And chop bananas, chop chop bananas(karate chop in front of body)
And mash bananas, mash mash bananas (stomp feet )
And eat bananas, eat eat bananas (“scoop” bananas into your mouth)
Then go bananas! (jump around wildly)

Finally book three was Harry Hungry! by Steven Salerno. This book was adorable! Harry is a very hungry baby and he’s not going to stop eating until his baby belly is full! The kids were having a blast laughing at all the silly things Harry ate and were very good about reminding me that one should not, in fact, eat things like mailboxes.

 

 

Under there…. underwear?

Yup, Underwear storytime.

I won’t lie, I was a TAD nervous that this could go awry and the silly level would become too much to handle but, it didn’t!
We had a blast with this goofy theme and I am glad I took the chance. we read three books and did one rhyme and one flannel. I kinda really love the flannel I made because it’s so silly and cute. But first, The books! I’ll list them below and my plan is to (hopefully) remember to come back later and write up some info / my thoughts on them but I just want to get this way overdue post up!

Aliens Love Underwear

Polar Bear’s Underwear

Vegetables in Underwear

Between the books we did our rhyme and flannel. Like I said, I love my flannel and the kids had a good laugh at it too.

Now You’re Getting Dressed

First put on your underwear, underwear, underwear. (step into underwear)
First put on your underwear. Now you’re getting dressed.

Stick your arms up in your shirt, in your shirt, in your shirt. (stick arms up and down)
Stick your arms up in your shirt. Now you’re getting dressed.

Pull your pants up to your waist, to your waist, to your waist. (squat up and down)
Pull your pants up to your waist. Now you’re getting dressed.

Wiggle your toes down in your socks, in your socks, in your socks. (wiggle & point to toes)
Wiggle your toes down in your socks. Now you’re getting dressed.

Slip your shoes on, tie them tight, tie them tight, tie them tight. (pretend to tie shoes)
Slip your shoes on, tie them tight. Now you’re getting dressed

Now you can go out and play, out and play, out and play. (march in place)
Now you can go out and play, You got yourself all dressed.

 

 

Five Pairs of Underwear

Five pairs of underwear on my bedroom floor
Mom washed the blue pair and then there were four!

Four pairs of underwear on my bedroom floor
Mom washed the red pair and then there were three!

Three pairs of underwear on my bedroom floor
Mom washed the green pair and then there were two!

Two pairs of underwear on my bedroom floor
Mom washed the white pair and then there was one!

One pair of underwear on my bedroom floor
Mom washed the last pair, my favorite pair of all!

No more underwear, Mom washed them all today;
But wait until tomorrow, there’s more on the way!

 

Here is a what color are your underwear template / printable that I created using an awesome image created by Miss Sarah’s Storytime Blog. Be sure that when you open it, click enable editing to be able to edit and print appropriately. 🙂

 

 

5…4…3…2…1… BLAST OFF!

As I would, I mis-counted / mis-timed my October themes this year. I had apples, fall, pumpkins, and halloween….or so I thought. I started a week earlier than I planned to or realized (I’m not sure?) and all of a sudden I had finished with pumpkins and was ready for halloween….except I still had another week! oops!

So, between pumpkins and halloween came a random excursion into the final frontier.

 

Space is always fun!

One of my sessions was super rowdy so wee didn’t get through all of our books or rhymes. My other session made it through more, but still not all of them. either it was a crazy week, or I picked too many things to do.

“The Mouse Who Ate the Moon” by Petr Horacek. I thought it was a cute story, but the illustration style wasn’t my favorite. Once again, I think my kids are getting too smart for these! As soon as they saw the Banana, they knew. This story is supposed to play out like the mouse finds a piece of the moon (the banana) and it smells good so she eats it and then gets worried that she’s done something wrong, but it ended up being the kids had to try to convince me that it wasn’t the moon that the mouse ate because, darn it, I wasn’t gonna let it go! hah

“The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers” is a super cute story about a boy who finds an airplane in his closet and flies it into space, only to break down and get stuck on the moon, but he’s not alone. Shortly after landing on the moon he finds out that an alien has also broken down and crashed landed here. The boy and the alien, though frightened at first, then work together to help one another fix their ship and head back home. Teamwork! 

 

“Higher! Higher! by Leslie Patricelli” is a very cute story with only like, 5 or so words in it; there are words on almost every page, but lots of repetition. Each time the girl is pushed on the swing she proclaims “Higher! Higher!” each time she goes higher she is met with a new scene until she then also meets a new friend. High fives are exchanged,

and then it’s back home again.

I didn’t actually read this book during one of my sessions due to squirelly-ness but then during craft time I had a couple of the quieter kids who wondered if there were more books so OF COURSE I obliged and read them this book while the rest of the kids were more active on the other side of the room.

One of the other books I read was “On the Launch Pad by Michael Dahl”
I have mixed feelings about this title; I like it, but I also felt like it took some explaining on some of the pages. I do like when a book offers and opens itself to dialogue beyond what’s written on the pages, but I may have missed the mark by picking something that I felt NEEDED dialogue beyond what’s on the page. I would usually chalk something like this up to my making a bad choice in level of book to use, but being that this is a counting book one would think that it should be pretty easy and geared towards a pretty young age.  Oh well!

Here are the rhymes I used. I switched them up and did a couple one day and another set the other, based of off wigglyness, of course. 🙂

I’m a rocket

I’m a rocket on the ground (crouch down on ground)
Waiting quietly without a sound (say softly and put finger to lips)
Light this fuse on my little toe (wiggle little toe, or point finger at toe)
Ready for blastoff, here I go! (put hands over head to form rocket point)
5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1
LIFT OFF! (Jump into air)

 

Going to the Moon

Zoom, zoom, zoom (rub hands)
I’m going to the moon (fly hands upward)
If you want to take the trip (wave “come on”)
Climb aboard my rocket ship (pretend to climb a ladder)
We’re blasting off real soon!

10 … 9 … 8 … 7 … 6 … 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1
BLAST OFF! (jump)

Faster faster faster we’ll soar up to the sky (Jump and reach)
Floating, soaring, gliding, isn’t it fun to fly? (arms like wings)
Now we’re on the moon, let’s all take a look (look around)
Now if you sit back down again, I’ll read you all a book. (sit down)

 

Tiny Star

There’s a tiny little star way up in the sky (use fingers to show tiny)
A tiny little star up so very high (raise fist higher)
She twinkles brightly (open fist & wiggle fingers)
All throughout the night (wiggle back and forth)
But in the day she fades away (wiggle fingers down)
She’s hiding out of sight (hide hand behind back)

 

And last but not least, our craft!  We talked about the different things that we saw in our space books and what we might see if WE went to space which led us to our craft of making a spaceship window! We took two paper plates, one whole, and one WITH a hole, and we drew a space scene on the whole plate then topped it with the holey plate which we covered with tin foil for a very spacey look.

I can’t quite remember where I first saw this but here’s a link to one place. 🙂

 

Fall two-fer

We’re back into storytime, full swing, and full into fall!

My first week back I did Apples as I thought it tied in nicely with the season and with back to school. This post will talk about the two following themes as I kind of tied them all together, or tried to.

First off was fall leaves. One of my coworkers and I had been chatting about our upcoming themes and realized we had both been planning on doing an apple and a fall leaf theme so one of us planned one, the other planned the other and we switched off and made adjustments as needed. She planned the Fall Leaves storytime / craft and I the Apples storytime / craft. I am not sure which books she read for each, but below are the books I read and activities I did for my fall storytime.

Our first book was “Fletcher and the Falling Leaves” by Julia Rawlinson good gracious, this book is adorable! I was a TAD nervous that it would be too long or involved but as I was reading, I realized that was NOT the case, the kids quite liked it! I’ll admit, the sparkly ice tree reveal at the end (spoilers, sorry) didn’t get as big of a reaction as I’d hoped, but oh well!

After our first book we did our first rhyme, Way Up High in the Autumn Tree, which is a shamelessly converted version of Way Up High in the Apple Tree. hah I did this with 4 verses and picked 2 places for the leaf to land and then asked the kids for other suggestions, you can do this with as many verses and places to land as you can think of!

Way up high in the Autumn tree

Way up high in an Autumn tree   (Stretch arms and scarves in air)
Four fall leaves smiled at me (hold scarf in a smile)
I shook the tree as hard as I could   (Shake arms and scarves in air)
1 leaf came down   (flutter hands/scarves down)
And landed on my foot!   (tap foot)

Way up high in an Autumn tree   (Stretch arms and scarves in air)
Three fall leaves smiled at me (hold scarf in a smile)
I shook the tree as hard as I could   (Shake arms and scarves in air)
1 leaf came down   (flutter hands/scarves down)
And landed on my nose!   (tap nose)

After that, we moved on to our second book, “Penguin and Pumpkin”, by Salina Yoon. I quite liked this book, the illustrations are adorable, and the story is quite sweet. However, for some weird reason, I had a hard time reading it aloud in both of my sessions. I found myself getting tongue tied or losing my place a few times and I really don’t know why. Maybe it was just an off week. *shrug*

Our third book was “Fall Leaves, Fall” by Zoe Hall. I really love the illustration style of this book with the bright, bold colors.

One of the books I REALLY wanted to read with a corresponding flannel was “Fall is Not Easy” by Marty Kelley

I have seen SO MANY adorable examples of flannel versions of this and will hopefully, SOMEDAY get around to making my own.

Our craft for the fall leaf theme was a fall leaf wreath! Ok, I’ll admit, we ordered about 9406745 paper plates for a program that we’d done before and had 273562943 people attend but this year after making sure we wouldn’t run out of plates, we of course had a much, much smaller crowd…so ya, plates are getting used for many many storytimes. 😛

We simply photocopied a handful of different leaf pictures onto fall leaf colored paper and cut them out. The kids used the leaves, glue, a paper plate sans middle, and string to create their wreaths. Hilariously, many of the kids then proceeded to string them on like a necklace and all I could think was that I had a room full of tiny little Autumn Flava Flavs.

do you like my wreath?!

 

Our sign language word we learned was “Leaf”

LEAF

 

PUMPKINS

 

The first pumpkin book we read for our Pumpkin storytime was “Mystery Vine” by Cathryn Falwell. I had hoped that I’d be able to get through at least most, if not all of the book before one of the kids guessed it was a pumpkin, but we had one older sibling in for this session and they were a bit ahead of the rest of the gang so we didn’t last very long. 😛  Even with the early spoiler, we still enjoyed the book. It’s a cute story with racially ambiguous characters and it’s even a little educational! I’m all for diversity in books, especially since the majority of families that I have in my storytimes are not Caucasian Americans; you don’t want to present nothing but books with characters that the attendees / readers may not be able to relate to.

Between our first and second books we did our first active rhyme. I’ve seen this rhyme floating around and I like it but I wanted to incorporate some manipulatives or shakers or something so I incorporated scarves and made up some actions to go along.

Pumpkin Pumpkin

Pumpkin, pumpkin on the ground (bend down touch ground)
How’d you get so big and round? (pop up spin scarf in circle)
Once you were a seed so small (ball up scarf)
Now you are a great big ball! (stretch scarf and arms out into circle)
Pumpkin, pumpkin on the ground (bend down touch ground)
How’d you get so big and round? (pop up spin scarf in circle)

As always, including actions that go along with the words will help retain information and build stronger connections. It also ups the fun factor, so why not, right?!

Our second pumpkin book was “It’s Pumpkin Time” by Zoe Hall.  Once again, the illustration is that kind of torn paper collage style and I just really enjoy it. I am apparently a fan of the Zoe Hall + Shari Halpern dream team I guess. hah

After book 2 comes rhyme 2. This is probably the 34328th time I’ve done this and the 32142nd version of the Jack and Jill rhyme, but I feel like this never gets old!

Two Little Pumpkins

Two little pumpkins sitting on a hill
One named Jack, the other named Jill
Roll away Jack, roll away Jill
Come back, Jack, come back Jill

Two little pumpkins balanced on my toe!
One rolls fast, the other rolls slow
Roll away fast, roll away slow
Come back, fast, come back slow

Two little pumpkins wearing silly hats
One was round, the other was flat
Roll away round, roll away flat
Come back, round, come back flat

 

Our third and final book was “It’s Pumpkin Day, Mouse!” by Laura Numeroff. I had a blast with this book! It features Mouse from “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” as he decorates pumpkins in different ways. He makes different faces like angry, or sad, or silly and it works super well for having the kids play along and make their own faces. The book was actually a board book which would normally be a bit young for my crowd of preschoolers, but this one encourages a lot of discussion and worked really well for being interactive.

 

So…. because I can’t math, I counted the weeks wrong and scheduled my fall / halloween themes a week earlier than I meant to. Oops.

 

So looks like I have a renegade week and it’s gonna be SPAACCCEEEE.

Grab your spacesuits!

You guys!

It’s almost Star Wars Reads Day!

It’s also the first day of our Zombie Camp program!

 

I can’t wait to do a great big program post soon!

 

Picking back up…

We had a rather long break from storytime, and I’ve had an even longer break from blogging. But now we’re both back!
I’m currently in the midst of week two back on the storytime train and it’s been crazy! My first week back we had almost 50 for my Monday night session and around 70 for my Thursday morning session…week two has so far only increased with around 60 for my Monday night and around 60 again for Thursday morning! I wish I had a more accurate count, but our clicker broke a while back and we’ve yet to get a replacement and there’s no way I can count, greet, ring the storytime bell, and hold the door all at once so I’ll have to just keep guestimating. hah

My first week back I did apples!

FOREVER APPLE

I’ll be honest….the books I read weren’t my absolute favorite, but even though I started planning these way in advance, I just couldn’t get my hands on too many apple books! They weren’t bad, just maybe not something I’d pick again.

I read The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall which I quite like. I think the illustrations are cute and the book talks about the changing of the seasons in relation to an apple tree so it’s a perfect story for transitioning to Autumn. this was my favorite of the three and the kids seemed to enjoy it as well.

After our first book I passed out the egg shakers and did our first active rhyme: Five Red Apples which you’ll find all over in storytime-internet-land. I’ve modified it to fit my usage more comfortably (as per usual. hah)

Five Red Apples

Five red apples growing on a tree (place apples on flannel board)
Some for you and some for me. (point out then point to self)
Let’s shake and wiggle the tree just so (Shake shakers/scarves/wiggle body around)
And 1 red apple will fall below (Remove 1 apple from board. Hands fall or have the kids fall down)

Four red apples growing on a tree (place apples on flannel board)
Some for you and some for me. (point out then point to self)
Let’s shake and wiggle the tree just so (Shake shakers/scarves/wiggle body around)
And 1 red apple will fall below (Remove 1 apple from board. Hands fall or have the kids fall down)

I continue each verse counting down to none and usually end with something like

No red apples hanging on the tree
None for you and none for me
What should we do with a tree so bare? 
Let’s pick more apples from over there! 

or

No red apples hanging on the tree
our basket’s full for you and me
What should we do with apples piled high 
Let’s go inside and bake a pie!

This worked great with my first session but then we encountered and issue with my second session in that I ran out of shakers and had to resort to bean bags for the extra empty hands. Unfortunately we had a lot of too little littles in preschool storytime for this session who had a difficult time with understanding the concept of one per person or egg or beanbag, not both. This is not surprising, but it did derail us for a hot minute there. Oh well! After we finally had ourselves sorted, the rhyme went great and we then moved on to our second book. Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins… which I continually slip up and call “Ten RAD Apples” haha

Speaking of Rad Apples…

I’m actually not really a fan of this book; the illustration style, uh, weirds me out. Sorry! 😦
However, I thought the concept looked fun to read with the kids and the interactive bit about guessing which animal comes next and having them make the noise is always good. I’ll admit, about 1/2 way through I was wishing I’d picked a different book; I apparently have a “Yippee, fiddle-dee-fee!” limit, and it’s not 10. oops.

After book 2 we went on to our next rhyme, another five little rhyme that is all over the place, in many incarnations and that I’ve used for apples, cookies, uh, maybe even donuts, basically anything round!

Five little apples sitting in a bowl (hold arms in bowl shape)
One fell out and started to roll (roll fists)
It bumped the table and hit my feet (pat legs then touch feet)
How many apples left to eat? 

Each time I do a round we try to go faster and faster until we all basically erupt into giggles. I didn’t actually get to do this rhyme with my Thursday session as they were quite rowdy already and there were 582604756 of them so we hurried through to craft time.

Our third and final book was the classic Apples and Pumpkins by Anne Rockwell. I wish this book were physically larger because it’s so cute but quite small. It’s a quick read and at the end I love to chat about the different costumes with the kids.

For our craft, we made apple pies! I used our die cut to cut out different shades of green and red apples and then had a volunteer cut a million strips of brown paper. We then glued the apples and strips (crust) onto paper plates. had I thought ahead, I would have brought in spice shakers to sprinkle cinnamon on so they’d smell like apple pie. Next time!

As usual, I brought back our Sign Language word and today it was, you guessed it, Apple

Apple

An appropriately warm storytime

Ok, so today’s theme for storytime was dragons and it felt like the room was full of dragons. or fire.

We like a fully immersive environment for our storytimes.

It didn’t help that one of the activities I picked was “Going on a bear hunt” but modified for dragons. I’m pretty sure that I looked SUPER convincing that I just ran for my life, dug under a wall, swam through a river, and climbed a mountain to get away from a dragon.

We also had a very rambunctious group today and it’s looking like we’re skewing towards younger kids for our preschool session again. I actually had to stop storytime, twice. I’ve never had to like, officially stop before. Today I put the book back down on the desk next to me and sat quietly until everything settled down again. It was a fantastic exercise in patience. However, as frustrating as it can be, I know that the kids are just kids and I very often hear from parents after some of the more trying sessions and the parents are always very kind and encouraging. It’s an incredible ego boost when teachers come up to me after and compliment my patience or say things like “I really like the way you did such and such to quiet them down and get their attention.” or whatever.

Anyhow! On to the stories!

The first book I did was “OH NO, Little Dragon!” by Jim Averbeck. I think it is such a stinkin’ cute book; the story, the art, the works. It talks about a little dragon who accidentally swallows some water which extinguishes his spark and stops him from blowing super neat fiery shapes. He does all sorts of silly stuff to warm himself up again but nothing works until his mama dragon helps out. Talk about warm fuzzies, ask the kids how they think Mama Dragon helped little dragon.  :3

After our first book we did the “Going on a bear hunt” but I replaced bear with dragon and basically did all the same things. We ran into a mountain, then a river, then some tall and short grass, and lastly a giant wall. we had to climb, swim, snake, and dig our way through, under, over, or around the obstacles until we finally came to a cave. We snuck, very very quietly into a cave so as not to wake the sleeping dragon and as we were all sneaking I loudly exclaimed AAHHCHHOOO!!!!! the kids faces were FANTASTIC! “OH NO!”  I shouted, “I WOKE UP THE DRAGON!  RUUUNN!!!!”

so then we frantically went back the way we came, swimming, climbing, snaking, digging as fast as we possibly could until PHEW! we made it!

After catching our breath and a little smoothing out and straightening of my hair (what can I say, I got really into it) we settled in for our next book, “Dragons Love Tacos” by Adam Rubin. I like to read this book as a half flannel story. The book has a few lists in it which make for excellent flannel pieces. I made flannel pieces for the salsas, good ingredients, and taco transportation devices (pants-load of tacos, anybody?)

Pantloads of tacos

I like adding the flannel aspect as I think it gives the kids more chance to interact with the story but I’m not a great storyteller, so having the actual book gives me some guidance and support as well. I’ve read this book before, and posted about it, but I kind of adore the book and the art so worth another go round for me. 🙂

Our craft was a super cute and clever craft tube dragon! I wish I could take credit for the idea, BUT I can’t, it’s all over teh interwebs. I did snap a picture of mine but I can’t find it now, so here’s and example with a link to directions:

 

click for instructions

 

These were adorable and the kids ran around the library after “breathing fire” by blowing through the non-firey end.

We also learned how to say Dragon in American Sign Language. I couldn’t find an image like I typically do but here’s a cute video!

 

Summer Reading craziness!

I have 3 drafts that I may never actually get around to finishing since they happened so long ago that event my notes don’t make much sense anymore, and aside from that, I have Pirates, Dogs (part 2), Pizza and Fourth of July (part 2)

My most recent storytime, session 2 of Fourth of July that just happened this morning was my largest storytime yet with about 80 people (though I lost count at one point because our clicker is broken *cries*)

One of our shelvers came up to me after and told me I’ve gotta stop because my following is getting too big. hahaha

Anyhow, today has been a VERY busy day with the world’s biggest storytime and 2 sessions of a VERY popular Robot Superhero program where kids got to make and decorate superhero characters out of electric toothbrushes that when finished and turned on dance and color! Think BristleBots but instead of using the motor and bristle end, we removed the bristle and build our robot around the handle of the toothbrush. Then we added golf pencils as feet and when you turn them on, they jitter jumble around and draw as they go! quite possibly the coolest part is that you can change the pencils out for chalk, or markers, or whatever!

There’s also a pretty neat engineering aspect to it in that you can modify the things you use to decorate it in order to make it react differently when you turn the motor on.

(probably)

 

 

 

C is for Colleen and that’s good enough for me.

Ok, I lied, C is for Cookie is how Cookie Monster sings it, but I always liked changing it to my name because I thought it was pretty cool.

 

I was on vacation for last weeks Thursday session and this week’s Monday session so there was some mixin’ up going on. Right before I left we were approached by some people involved in a “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” production who wanted to come in and do a storytime but I wasn’t sure which session they’d attend so it was a little up in the air theme wise this week. They ended up coming and doing the Monday session so their theme was cookies that evening where my co-worker then did rhymes and songs about cookies before they made a paper plate mouse craft to go with “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”. When I came in on Thursday I didn’t have a set plan for theme but then I heard that we had been generously given 4 tickets to the production to give away so I figured I should do something at least mildly cookie related. I ended up going with a theme of The Letter “C”.

I read the books:

“The Police Cloud” by Christoph Niemann 

“Cat Tale” by Michael Hall

and, of course, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” by Laura Numeroff

The Letter C puzzle flannel which I shamelessly stole from Storytime Katie is what I used to kick off our storytime. I told the kids that I forgot what my theme was for storytime and though I brought a puzzle to remind me, the pieces were all jumbled and I’d need their help to figure it out. Each piece had something that began with the letter C on it which I held up and had them tell me what it was. My puzzle contained

cookies
caterpillar
cat
cow
cupcake
crayons
candy cane

 

I put them up on the board somewhat in the shape of the letter, but not too close so it wouldn’t give it away and then I had them help me move them to their proper places. I was silly about it by putting them in the wrong spots and upside down and it all got some good laughs. I was actually quite surprised at just how well they did. I had a huge group, over 70, so I obviously couldn’t have them come up and help physically so I was worried that it wouldn’t go well with them just vocally helping me but it did! I wish I could have made the puzzle a bit bigger so it’d be easier to see, but unfortunately our printer won’t print on very large paper.  

As soon as the puzzle was together they IMMEDIATELY got what I was going for and we figured out what our storytime was about, yay!

I then told them with my hands that we’d be reading a

BOOK

about The Letter “C”

The first book was we did was The Police Cloud. It was a cute book and turned out to be a great book for me to ask the kids questions after and sometimes during and the kids even asked me a few without having me solicit them to! One girl asked how the cloud put the fire out, so we went back and looked at that page and talked about the picture and came up with a few possible scenarios as to how it may have happened. It was a simple story but turned out to be quite engaging.

Between my first and second book I did down around the corner at the bakery shop which I also did during my Money Smart Storytime but it’s fun and the kids like it so why not put it to good use.

Down around the corner at the Bakery Shop

Down around the corner at the Bakery Shop
(tap hands on knees in rhythm or move arms down and over with “down around the corner”)

Were 5 little cookies with sprinkles on top
(hold up 5 fingers then “sprinkle fingers”)

Along came someone with a nickel to pay
(hold up nickel flannel piece and replace cookie on board with nickel)

They bought a little cookie and ate it right away
(pretend to eat cookie)

CONTINUE WITH 4, 3, 2, AND 1

Down around the corner at the Bakery Shop
(tap hands on knees in rhythm or move arms down and over with “down around the corner”)

Were no little cookies with sprinkles on top
(hold arms up and shake head no)

Along came someone with a nickel to pay
But they had to come back another day

 

After our first rhyme, I read our next book, in fact, kids started calling out “Read another book!” after we finished our rhyme. haha. Though I do plan an outline for each storytime so I’m not fumbling around deciding if I should read a book or do a flannel in the middle of the storytime, I do often try to include the kids in the decision making as much as I can so if I know that I can easily switch a book for a flannel or if I have 2 books that would each work equally as well order wise I’ll often ask which they prefer. This time I didn’t even have to. Up next was Cat Tale and let me tell you, I fell in love with that book. it’s such a fun and silly read! The illustrations are big and bold and the words and the way it was written just crack me up. I was a tad bit worried that I’d have trouble reading it as it can get quite twisty at times, but no problem at all! I do think that it’s one of those books that you really have to get into if you want it to come across well, if you just sit there and read the words on the page, it loses the silliness.

I also used the Cat Tale book to ask lots of memory and observational questions, mostly about color since there were so many big blocks of it. “Can you tell me something that you saw that was blue?”  I obviously had certain things in my head that I figured they’d say, but they always surprised me by remembering random or little things that were whatever color. Kids are impressive!

After that it was on to our next active rhyme. I told them that one of my favorite fruits were cherries and then we talked about what color sherries were. I asked them if they’d ever seen purple cherries, or green cherries, or blue cherries which they all giggled no to but then I tried to trick them and asked if they’d ever seen yellow cherries, most of them giggled again and said no, but one kid yelled “YES! I HAVE!” haha. Then I said we were going to pretend to pick some cherries by doing a rhyme; Four Red Cherries. I found it here and changed it a bit and added a couple verses to make it a bit longer for the older kids. The kids helped me out by performing the actions as we said them and counting on their fingers. When we finished one kid asked what we should do with all the cherries and one kid suggested we throw them in the trash but then another shouted “I’ll eat them!” 😛

Four Red Cherries

Four red cherries on the tree,
Two for you and two for me.
So WIGGLE that tree and watch them fall.
One, two, three, four -that is all.

Four red cherries on the tree,
Two for you and two for me.
So CLAP at that tree and watch them fall.
One, two, three, four -that is all.

Four red cherries on the tree,
Two for you and two for me.
So BLOW on that tree and watch them fall.
One, two, three, four -that is all.

OH! I JUST NOW remembered that I had intended to do the other cookie rhyme I really like but totally forgot. bummer. Oh well, here it is in case anybody wants to use it.

Five Big Cookies

Five big cookies sitting in the bowl. (hold up five fingers)
One fell out and started to roll. (roll hands)
It bounced off the table and hit my toe (clap once, and touch toes )
How many cookies now sitting in the bowl? 1-2-3-4 (Count fingers)
Four big cookies sitting in the bowl. (hold up four fingers)
One fell out and started to roll. (roll hands)
It bounced off the table and hit my toe (clap once, and touch toes )
How many cookies sitting in the bowl? 1-2-3 (Count fingers)
Three, big cookies sitting in the bowl. (hold up three fingers)
One fell out and started to roll. (roll hands)
It bounced off the table and hit my toe (clap once, and touch toes )
How many cookies sitting in the bowl? 1-2 (Count fingers)
Two, big cookies sitting in the bowl (hold up two fingers)
One fell out and started to roll. (roll hands)
It bounced off the table and hit my toe (clap once, and touch toes )
How many cookies sitting in the bowl? 1-2-3 (Count fingers)
One big cookie sitting in the bowl. (hold up one fingers)
It fell out and started to roll. (roll hands)
It bounced off the table and hit my toe (clap once, and touch toes )
How many cookies sitting in the bowl? (Hold up one fingers)
No big cookies sitting in the bowl
They all fell out and started to roll (roll hands)
They bounced off the table and they hit my toes (clap once, and touch toes )
So don’t put those cookies back in the bowl (shake finger no) 

Original credit for this goes here, but I changed it up a bit for me.

Now, I quite like the “if you give a…” books so I had fun reading that one, but they aren’t really new and exciting books, but that’s ok!  While I do try to incorporate new and different books into my storytimes, it’s good to bring out an old favorite every once in a while. After we finished reading, I announced that we’d be giving out the tickets and then we headed back to the craft room for our craft. I had intended to do paper plate cookies with chocolate chips, but I couldn’t find the left over chocolate chips so I had to improvise and use sequins instead. It turned out just as fun though. I provided a paper plate, crayons, glue and sequins and let the kids each “bake” their own cookie.

I felt really good about this session even though it was rather last minute. hah. Sometimes you just have those sessions that even though it feels super planned and great, it doesn’t go well, and sometimes you really luck out and go in pretty blind and flustered and things just go fabulously. 🙂

We’re now on a storytime break as we gear up for summer reading. I’ve got lots of fun stuff planned though so stay tuned! 😀