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.

Let's Eat!

Everyone loves food and there are so many good titles to choose from. Here is a sampling of what we read at our food-themed storytime today :

Too Many Pears  by Jackie French (love her cow, Pamela)
"Hi, Pizza Man!"  by Virginia Walter (always a favorite)
The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear  by Don & Audrey Wood

Flannel/Book/Puppet Story
Lunch  by Denise Fleming

This is such an easy book to expand in so many directions (colors, foods, textures).
We shared this book with a mouse puppet and flannel. As each food was listed, I had the mouse "grab" the food off the flannel and chow down.

Let's Go To The Fair!

The State Fair in Minnesota is a big deal. So, to celebrate the end of the summer, we took a trip to the fair at storytime!

Books We Read :
Night at the Fair  by Donald Crews
I Know a Wee Piggy by Kimberly Norman

A Fabulous Fair Alphabet by Debra Frasier (Minnesota's own!)

Roller Coaster by Kevin O'Malley (sadly now out of print ...)

The thing to do at the State Fair (other than go on the rides, see the animals and play games) is eat. And everything you can get to eat comes on a stick. So I created this simple flannel to go with that theme :

     ON A STICK

     I went down to the Minnesota Fair

     The cows and the sheep and the pigs were there.

     But when food I did demand,

     We waited at a stand

     And got cotton candy on a stick to share!

     bacon

     a dill pickle

     a corn dog
     a caramel apple

Dinosaur Craft Storytime

I love having the opportunity to do craft storytimes with older kids (ages 4-8) during the summer -- not only do we get to make cool and fun things, but I get to read books that otherwise I would be unable to read to my toddlers & preschoolers because of the length. Such was the case today!

Books We Read :
Inside-Outside Dinosaurs by Roxie Munro (a good introduction)
When Dinosaurs Came With Everything by Elise Broach, fantastically illustrated by David Small -- this is one of my favorite dinosaur books, but due to the length I usually can't read it at storytime.
T is for Terrible by Peter McCarty

Dinosaur Flannel :
Since I did not have time to turn this into a prop with flannel pieces, I had to take the lazy man's shortcut and use images printed onto cardstock. Worked just great - and now I plan to turn this into a full-fledged flannel rhyme for future use!

(to the tune of "Little White Duck")
There is one dinosaur, stomping through the trees,
One dinosaur, eating all he sees,
He took a bite from a mountain top
And along came a friend with a CRASH! BANG! PLOP!
Now there's two dinosaurs, stomping through the trees,

Two dinosaurs, eating all they see ...

Dinosaur Craft :

I got this out of a fantastic book titled Paper Scissors Glue by Catherine Woram. G

ood, easy crafts for kids in preschool and early-elementary. We made a 3-D dinosaur using cardstock, scissors, markers and stickers. Fun, cute and easy!

 

Buggy Bugs

Today at storytime was all about BUGS -- not insects, mind you, because included were stories about spiders, centipedes, snails and worms.

I love doing a bug-themed storytime because I always do the following repeat-after-me chant, learned years ago at Girl Scout Camp :
Flea!
Flea, fly!
Flea, fly, flow,Mos-qui-to!
Calamine, calamine, calamine lotion
Oh, no more calamine lotion!Itchy, itchy, scratchy, scratchy got one on my back-y, back-y,
Owie, owie, zowie, zowie, wish he'd go away!
Quick! Get the bug spray!I think he went that-a-way!Sh ... sh ... sh ... sh ... shhhhhhh .......

We also read the following "buggy" books :
Sitting in my box by Dee Lillegard
(one of my favorites, now sadly out of print)
I love bugs! by Emma Dodd
Gotcha! by Gail Jorgensen
Big rig bugs by Kurt Cyrus

I then shared the book prop for "Sam's Sandwich" by David Pelham

Finally, I created this flannel for today's storytime. The idea was "borrowed" from Miss Mary Liberry and worked just absolutely fantastically with my enormous summer crowd :

Five little caterpillars and not one more,
One spun a cocoon and now there are four.

Four little caterpillars sitting on a tree,
One spun a cocoon and now there are three.

Three little caterpillars with a big job to do,
One spun a cocoon and now there are two.

Two little caterpillars basking in the sun,
One spun a cocoon and now there is just one.

One little caterpillar knew her work was almost done,
She spun a cocoon ... and now there are none.

 BUT ...

One cocoon opened up underneath the sun.
Now there's a beautiful butterfly - that makes one!

Another cocoon opened up with the morning dew,
There's another beautiful butterfly and that makes two!


                                                       Yet another cocoon opened up in the shade of the tree,
                                                       That makes another butterfly - now there are three!

                                                       One more cocoon opened up spreading her wings galore,
                                                       There's another butterfly -- that makes four!

                                                       The last little cocoon opened up, feeling so alive,
                                                       That makes another butterfly -- at last there are five.

MnDOT Truck Storytime

Thanks to the Minnesota Department of Transportation, our truck-themed storytime today had a little extra "vroom"!

We started off with a few truck books :
Job Site  by Nathan Clement
I Drive a Snowplow  by Sarah Bridges

We read the snowplow book because although it was June and about 85 degrees in the shade, the MnDOT folks knew that this truck would be ready and available to visit us.


Sam tells the kids what a MnDOT truck driver does

Sam, our MnDOT driver, came in and told us a few pieces of information about the trucks :

the MnDOT trucks are always orange

they do more than just plow snow!

poor Sam gets a lot of calls from his boss "in the middle of the night" to come and do a job for the state of Minnesota.

We thank MnDOT and especially Sam for coming out to the library today and giving us an up-close experience with one of these massive working trucks.

Outside with the big plow!

 




 

The back looks like a giant dump truck







StoryWalk

At our last spring storytime today I hosted a StoryWalk.
The original StoryWalk Project was created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, VT.
I modified the idea for my use at my library.

We used Denise Fleming's fabulous

Our small small pond

In The Small, Small Pond.

After an abbreviated storytime inside, we walked around the pond outside while reading the 15 panels from the book, each one displayed on a blank lawn sign holder.

This entire project was extremely affordable -- I purchased two copies of the big book, had them laminated, purchased the blank lawn signs and lawn sign holders and mounted the pages of the book onto the signs. The beauty of displaying a StoryWalk this way is that we can re-used the signs to display a different book at a different StoryWalk in the future (I used double-sided tape which is very easy to remove from corrugated plastic). My attendees were thrilled with getting their kids outside and we had absolutely perfect weather. A success!


hover, shiver, wings quiver



sweep, swoop, swallows scoop