Who's Sick Today?

Ick!
We all hate being sick.

Today at storytime we shared stories about illness which included toothaches, sore throats, sneezes and sniffles. We also talked about washing hands to keep those pesky germs AWAY from our bodies!

Books We Shared Today
Who's Sick Today?  by Lynne Cherry (young stoats with sore throats!)
Hippo Goes Bananas  by Marjorie Dennis Murray
Llama Llama Home with Mama  by Anna Dewdney
Hunky Dory Ate It  by Katie Evans

For a hand-washing excersise, we shared this fingerplay rhyme.
I made these silly germ monsters with art work from dreamstime.com which I used on my fingers -- each germ was washed away as the rhyme progressed :

Five nasty germs going out to play
Along came the water ... and washed one away!

Four nasty germs trying to have some fun,
Along came the soap ... and one had to run.

Three nasty germs trying to make you sick,
Along came the scrubbing and said, "you're not going to stick!"

Two nasty germs got into a fight,
Along came the rinse and washed one out of sight.

One nasty germ thought it couldn't be seen ...
But I dried my hands with a towel and now my hands are nice and clean!


Many years ago, I made a book prop from the Lois Sachar book Monkey Soup. It is one of the best book props I have ever made and I use it every year. Best thing about this prop? You can always replace the pieces.

The book (which is out of print) tells the story of a little girl whose daddy is sick.
Just like mommy is making him chicken noodle soup to feel better, the girl is making "monkey soup", named such because of the help from her stuffed monkey (who ends up as a soup ingredient at the end). I skip the entire monkey part and just stick with the main ingredients.

They are :
crayons for Daddy's pale face
balloons to make Daddy happy
band-aids to make him feel better
a blanket to keep him warm
kleenex for all his sneezes
buttons for fun (because Grandma gave her a sweater with buttons she loves)
bubbles because who doesn't love bubbles??
a napkin so he stays clean while he eats
soap and a toothbrush so he can clean up before & after eating
YUM! Eat up!



Monkey Soup!


Finally, to finish we did "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed". I brought along a phone prop so I could "talk" to the doctor after each monkey bumped his or her head.

I also had this available for parents to make at home -- the monkeys are two-sided so that they can turn to the hurt (or sad) side when they bump their heads :

All About Our Senses

Taste! Touch! Smell! Sight! Sound!
Today we celebrated the way most of us experience the world.
We talked briefly about people who had difficulty with sight and sound, but most of us can taste, touch and smell things -- sometimes all at once!

Books We Read Today :
My Five Senses  by Aliki
Five For a Little One  by Chris Raschka
Seven Blind Mice  by Ed Young
Polar Bear, Polar Bear  by Eric Carle

I borrowed heavily from Ryan the Librarian for this version of the chant/song/poem "The Five Senses" :

Rub your hands to get some feeling,
Stretch your ears to check your hearing,
Sniff to smell what's in the air --
Good or bad? Nose beware!

Blink, blink, blink - what can you see?
How many fingers - one? two? three?
Last it's time for tongue push-ups :
Up, down, left, right and round and round!

I ended up singing this text on an upward scale, going up stepwise and ending the ocatve on "nose beware!" I then made the trip down the octave stepwise, ending with the last line. Worked pretty well.



My flannel for the day wasn't really about the senses, but featured putting together the man in the moon complete with meatball eyes, cheese nose, and a pizza mouth ...
"Aiken Drum" Flannel :


The last story we shared is an old one from Book Props. It involves the antics of a silly goose and a siller duck who decide to play a game they call the standing-still-for-the-longest-contest. Unfortunately, they both want to win the game so much they do not move even when a fox comes and sweeps them both up in his bag for lunch and dinner.

The prop is based on the book Don't Fidget a Feather! by Erica Silverman.
While retelling the story, I took some liberties with the plot to incorporate the senses (the sound and feel of the bumblebee, the smell and feel of the tickly bunnies, the sharp claws and loud caw of the pesky crows, etc. etc.)