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.

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