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 ..."

Happy Halloween!

This week at both Family and Baby Storytime we celebrated Halloween with songs, fingerplays, flannel stories and, of course costumes and treats! Here is a sampling of what we shared this week :

Pumpkin Eye by Denise Fleming
Halloween Forest by Marion Dane Bauer
Skeleton Hiccups by Margery Cuyler

Peek-a-Boooo! by Marie Cimarusti
Where is Baby's Pumpkin? by Karen Katz

One of my all-time favorite cut-and-tell stories was shared -- "The Little Old Lady and the Cat"

Once upon a time there lived a little old lady and her cat.

Make sure to fold paper with open end at top

They had outgrown their house, so one day they went for a walk to find a new one.

Cut paper as you tell story -- make a notch at the top for the stem

Cut a high, tilted door on right for pumpkin's mouth



They came upon the perfect house and decided to move in.

However, there was no door in the house ...

So, the little old lady (who wore a tall, pointed hat) made a door fit just for her

Cut a smaller door in middle of house for pumpkin nose

cut a big door



Make a hole and cut through to make window (pumpkin eyes)



The cat wanted his own door as well, so the little old lady made a door fit just for him

cut a smaller door for the cat

When they moved inside, they realized there were no windows!

So, the little old lady made a window in the house.

cut a window in the paper

When their new house was finished, the little old lady put up the calendar on the wall.

"Oh my goodness!" she cried. "Today is Halloween!"

In all their hard work, they had forgotten about Halloween -- and had no decorations!

But when they looked further ... they realized they had the perfect jack-o-lantern.

Ta-da!

Flannel Stories We Shared :

This is the House that is Haunted

This is the house that is haunted ...

This is the moon that shines on the house that is haunted.

These are the bats that fly past the moon that shines ...

This is the ghost that startles the bats that fly past the moon ...

These are the trees that sway in the breeze that flutters the ghost who startles the bats ...

This is the cat that sits by the trees that sway in the breeze ...

This is the pumpkin that glows in the dark that warms the cat who sits by the trees ...

Four Little Spiders

Four little spiders,

Hanging from a tree,

Trying to decide what to wear for Halloween.

The first one said,

"I think I'll wear a hat!"

The second one said,

"I think I'll be a bat!"

The third one said,

"A scary ghost I'll be!"

The fourth one said,

"I think I'll just be me."

So the four little spiders,

Hanging from a tree,

Scared the trick-or treaters on the night of Halloween -- Boo!

Giddyup! Horses in the Library!

We had a very special guest star at storytime today ... and his name was Joey. Joey came to us along with his handler Chris. They both are from Half-Pint Horses out of Bloomington, MN who specialize in bringing miniature horses to community events and hospitals.

Before Joey made his grand entrance, we shared a few horse stories :

 

Horses : Trotting! Prancing! Racing!

by Patricia Hubbell

Horse
by Malachy Doyle

We ended our mini-storytime with the silly song "Alice the Camel."

And then ... JOEY!

Thank you, Half-Pint Horses!

 

Trees & Leaves

Fall is upon us in Minnesota ... which means it's time to celebrate the changing colors of the trees!
Today at storytime we shared the following books :

The Busy Tree  by Jennifer Ward
Fall, Leaves, Fall!  by Zoe Hall
Fall is not easy  by Marty Kelley
Leaf Man  by Lois Ehlert








I purchased craft leaves at Michael's for our leaf fingerplay. I have used "real" leaves for this but find that by the time I get the leaves to storytime they've lost a lot of their brilliance. Fake ones do just fine.
We all learned the ASL sign for "tree" which was incorporated into this rhyme.
I held the leaves high aloft while my attendees provided the wind to blow them down ...

this can be sung to any "five little ..." tune you know
Five little leaves, so bright and gay
Were hanging on a tree one day,
The wind came blowing through the town ...
And one  little leaf came tumbling down.
one by one I dropped the leaves
at the end, I "raked" them up into a pile

I included this Native American story which explains why some trees lose their leaves and some stay green all winter long (a big deal in the north). The story is titled "The Evergreens" and comes from the Vancouver Coast region. My only substitution here was I made a maple tree rather than a willow tree. I love this story and had a lot of fun making Jack Frost.