oh dear I have fallen behind!

I know I said I planned to use the storytime break to catch up on blog posts, but I instead used it to catch up on storytime plans.

When we last left our heroes…

I had just done a storytime on the sun and clouds.

Unfortunately I’ve been a bad, bad blogger, and a bad, bad record keeper and totally lost track of which themes I did when! 😦

Looks like I have to just make one big post about a handful of different themes I remember doing and books I covered but not with the detail I usually have. sadface! Sorry, folks. For now, here is a post about a Dance storytime.   More will come soon!

The books I read were:

Duck Sock Hop by Jane Kohuth
Giraffes can’t Dance by Giles Andreae
Got to Dance by M. C. Helldorfer 

I loved “Giraffes Can’t Dance”, I thought it was super cute and silly and had a cute message too. 🙂

The active rhymes I did were Dance your Fingers/Scarves and We can Dance.

Dance your Scarves

Dance your scarves up, dance your scarves down
Dance them to the side, dance them all around!
Dance your scarves left, then dance them to the right!
Dance them very slowly, then dance with all your might!
Dance them on your knees, then dance them on your toes!
Dance them on your ears, then dance them on your nose!
Dance them in a circle, then dance them in a square!
Dance them over here, then dance them over there!
Dance them on your shoulders, dance them on your head
Dance them on your tummy, now let’s put them all to bed!

I’ve seen the “dance your…” rhyme all over the place with many variations. I tweaked it a bit for my liking and as I often do, I ask the kids for ideas on how and where to dance them so we always end up with some really silly ones.
The other active rhyme I did was “We can Dance”

We Can Dance

We can dance, dance, dance
We can hop, hop, hop
We can clap, clap, clap
We can stop, stop, stop
We can nod our heads yes
We can shake our heads no
We can bend our knees a little bit
Then sit down really slow

“We can Dance” is “We can Jump” with the word jump changed to dance. Again, we added our own silly motions and after we also just did a silly dance off which is always a big hit. Sometimes you need to give them a little guidance and suggestions to start, but after a minute or two, they go nuts! We danced like different animals, and other objects, and just danced really goofy or really serious. It’s a fun way to help kids reinforce words and their meanings by letting them act them out in ways that make sense to them; think kinesthetic / tactile or multi-sensory learning. Engaging more than one sense in learning something new is thought to create stronger connections in our brains which helps with memory and comprehension.

I had fun with this storytime though I was nervous because I don’t really do music and how do you do a dance storytime with little or no music?!  I guess you could have called it more of a motion storytime, but either way, I think it went over pretty well.

Up next, as many storytimes as I can remember / fit into one post!