Bunches of Bears!



My favorite little brown bear puppet
from Fancy Zoo Puppets
(no longer available ... of course)

 It's almost winter ... which means it's time for Bears (and other creatures) to find a nice, warm place to sleep until spring. Our stories today were all about bears and hibernation.

Books We Read :

Every Autumn Comes the Bear 
by Jim Arnosky
Hibernation Station 
by Michelle Meadows
Bear Dreams 
by Elisha Cooper
No 
by Claudia Rueda


Time to Sleep  by Denise Fleming (book prop)
*note to Flannel Friday-ers : this is not a flannel I made!
It was purchased from bookprops.com many years ago (no longer available)
Would make a fantastic handmade flannel, however!
The bear does come out of the cave ...

Ever heard that song about the ants? Where they go marching to get out of the rain?
Well, here is one just like that, but it's about bears getting ready for hibernation time!

The bears go marching one by one,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The bears go marching one by one,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The bears go marching one by one,
The little one knew that autumn was done ...
And they all go marching down
To their den
Because winter
Had set in, bum ... bum ... bum

... two by two ...
little one stopped to sneeze : "ahh-choo!"

... three by three ...
little one stopped to scratch a tree

... four by four ...

little one stopped to eat just a bit more

... five by five ...

little one stopped to whisper : "nighty-night!"

Finally, I turned Lydia Dabcovich's book "Sleepy Bear" into a flannel story :

Shoe Bop

It was all about shoes (and boots and sandals and slippers) at storytime today. We had a dusting of snow so we could talk about wearing boots outside and shoes inside.
Shoe-be-doo-be-doo-wop!

Books We Shared

"Two Shoes, Blue Shoes, New Shoes!" by Fitz-Gibbon

"Shoe Baby" by Dunbar

"Botas Nuevas (New Boots)" by Van Genechten
"Whose Shoes?" by Hines

A Silly Chant We Shared (and I showed photos of different types of shoes) :
Late last night,
When I was asleep,
Someone put funny shoes on my feet!
I walked here,
I walked there,
I walked almost everywhere!
But at the end of the night,
My shoes were too tight,
So I took them off, and wiggled my toes,
And my feet felt all right ...
We ended with a horse shoe, which of course people can't wear ...

Flannel Story
Finally! Pete the Cat made an appearance at the end of storytime with his groovy white shoes ...

For you Flannel Friday-ers out there, this was my first attempt using Puffy Paint (Tulip brand) -- here's how some of the more successful shoes turned out. The smaller the shoes got, the more difficult it became ... you may also notice from the above photo that I modified the story a bit. I changed the story from Pete stepping "into a bucket of water" (what?) to having rain fall down and washing all the colors off to return his shoes to white at the end.

Music, Maestro!

Ahh ... something near and dear to my heart -- music. Today was about all things musical. We shared music-related books, sang oodles of songs and I had an instrument demo.




Here's what we read :
Thump, Thump, Rat-a-Tat-Tat  by Gene Baer (love reading this book)
Punk Farm  by Jarrett Krosoczka (how can you go wrong with a barnyard rock band?!?)
Hey Diddle Diddle  by Eve Bunting
Soon, Baboon, Soon  by Dave Horowitz (complete with triangle demo at the end -- ting!)

I brought my violin and played an Irish tune followed by a rousting fiddle version of "If You're Happy and You Know It" (always a crowd pleaser). I also brought a grab-bag of percussion instruments as a show-and-tell. It included :

• rain stick
• tambourine
• bells
• chimes
• shekere
• kalimba

Finally, we sang this silly song that I've known for ages and ages (learned in Girl Scouts) and which I adapted for the flannel board with a shout-out to Reading Chick at Rain Makes Applesauce who gave me the idea. I included verses about the Penguin, the Horse, the Panda Bear, the One-Eared Cat and Fuzzy Wuzzy.

Before ...



... and after!

 

Here is my YouTube clip of the song, with the above verses included ...

 

Flannel Friday - Turkeys!

I love this flannel and use it pretty much every year.
It was a collaborative effort -- one of my brilliant co-workers made the turkeys, I made the pizza and I modified the original rhyme to suit my needs. It can be spoken or sung to the tune of "Five Little Pumpkins".

Five Fat Turkeys

Five Fat Turkeys sitting on a fence,

The first one said,

"Oh my! I am immense!"

The second one said,

"Just watch me waddle"
The third one said,
"Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!"
The fourth one said,
"Thanksgiving Day is coming!"
The fifth one said,
"We'd better start running!"

The turkeys could not be found on Thanksgiving Day,
So the poor old farmer had this to say ...

spoken
"I guess we'll have to eat pizza ..."