Money, Counting & Numbers

Since storytime fell only a few days before tax day, I could not resist hosting a money and number themed storytime. Here's what we shared :

Books We Shared :

Who's Counting? by Nancy Tafuri

Jenny Found a Penny by Trudy Harris
(I incorporated a jar of change and dropped money bit by bit into the jar as I read the book - works like a charm)

Two at the Zoo by Danna Smith

One Gorilla by Anthony Browne

I shared my all-time favorite, go-to rhyme for anything money, food or humor related.

It's called "Bakery Shop" and I used a donut prop plus a nickel-sized coin (actually a coin from Denmark that has a hole in it).

Here's how the song/rhyme goes:

(can be sung to the tune of "Oh I had a little chicken and she wouldn't lay an egg ...")

Oh I walked around the corner

And I walked around the block

And I walked right into

The bakery shop

And I took a donut

Right out of the grease,

And I handed the lady

A five-cent piece.

Well ... she looked at the nickel

And she looked at me,

And she said,

"Young man, you're cheating me!

There's a hole in the nickel and it goes right through!"

I said,

"There's a hole in the donut too!"

Thanks for the donut ... good-bye!


Continuing in that same theme of money/bakery shops/nickels, I shared my "Five Little Cupcakes" flannel, complete with a "man with a nickel in his hand" who "tick tocks" his way into the shop to steal a cupcake :

My final story was a book prop for Pat Brisson's "Benny's Pennies" which my library has had for many years (purchased from the now extinct bookprops.com site) - this is such a perfect book for a prop -- the items in question are tucked inside the pennies and are revealed as Benny purchases items for his family.

My take home activity for the week was on numeracy awareness for kids. A very simple counting sheet which incorporates the concept of money (coins) and adding up to create a certain amount of money.

For at-home use only

Rascally Rabbits

I think I do a rabbit-themed storytime every spring. There are just SO. MANY. BOOKS. published about rabbits and bunnies that it makes putting together a storytime extremely easy ... or difficult, depending on how many good titles you are able to pull together.


In my case, I left off a few of my favorites since I wanted to focus more on RABBITS as ANIMALS (not cute little stuffed animal type creatures) and since I had just presented a spring-themed storytime. Here are the titles I ended up sharing at storytime :

I adore this book ... and am very sad that it is no longer in print. I also use this book for any gardening or vegetable themed storytime.

Another out of print title ... this is a nice book for dialogic reading as the text invites children to supply the noises that the rabbit starring in this book either hears or makes himself.

This gem by Lidnsay Barrett George is another favorite of mine. I love using it for the gentle and subtle text on care of wildlife, the fantastic double-paged illustrations, and most of all the casual diversity with the Latino boy who stars in this book about a boy and his imaginary pet rabbit.

This book is a HOOT. So much fun to read (although I almost always trash my voice with the monster screaming "BUNNIES BUNNIES BUNNIES BUNNIES!!!!"). This book is very dependent on the reader, however - that's what makes this book come alive, so be prepared to put on your game face!

From a few years ago I brought out my handmade bunny finger puppets and did my "Five Little Rabbits" song to the tune of "Five Little Ducks". I had the kids keep track of the colors as the rabbits disappeared so they could tell me which rabbit had run away.

Five little rabbits one fine day
Hopped to the carrot patch far away

Mama Rabbit called them "thump! thump! thump!"
(stomp foot on the ground)
But only four came back to her stump.

Of course at the end all five rabbits come back to Mama Rabbit.

I adapted Miss Tracey's fingerplay "Five Little Stawberries" into a flannel-puppet rhyme. I love using my puppets actively to remove things from the flannelboard, and today I even had a few kids comment that "hey! that rabbit is taking away the strawberries!" Mission accomplished.

Five little strawberries

growing in a patch

Along came a rabbit

with a snatch, snatch, snatch!

He ate one strawberry

Then looked around ...

And hopped away without a sound.

My grand finale for this storytime was sort of silly ... but fun.

I "performed" (encouraged participation, but it never always works out that way) the rhyming chant "Little Bunny Foo Foo". My rabbit came out, I incorporated a mouse finger puppet, and wore a glittery tiara with a sparkly wand as I played the role of the good fairy.

At the end I had an activity sheet for families to take home if they wanted to sing/chant the rhyme at home themselves ... with fingerpuppet props.

for at home use only

Spring Has Sprung ... or has it?

I had planned on a spring-themed storytime this week, but here is what it looked like the morning of storytime :

Nice, eh?

Still, I went ahead with what was originally planned.

We shared four spring-themed storytime books.

This new one by Kevin Henkes and Laura Dronzek is lovely (the same pair that created the book "Birds" which I simply adore)

Anne Rockwell's book about a little girl looking for her robin is also charming. I asked the kid's if they could see the robin on each page of the book.

I love Lauren Stringer's illustrations in this book - the text sometimes goes over the heads of younger kids, but the images of bare feet squishing in the mud can be enjoyed by anyone.

I was a bit apprehensive about sharing this book because Easter is not a holiday we can celebrate in public libraries, but fortunately the library barcode label sat right over the word "Easter" so I could just call this book "Babies : A Springtime Counting Book".

I also skipped the last page about bells ringing at the church. Worked pretty well with a bit of clever editing.

I shared my flannel for "Five Spring Eggs" ... always get a kick out of the reaction at the end when the fifth eggs cracks open to reveal a little chick.

This flannel rhyme is to the tune of "Five Brown Teddies" and goes ...

Five spring eggs were sitting in the hay

Five spring eggs were sitting in the hay

And if one spring egg should crack (clap hands) and roll away ...

There'll be four spring eggs sitting in the hay ...

(last time)

One spring egg, sitting in the hay

One spring egg, sitting in the hay

And if THAT spring egg should stay just one more day ...

CRACK! (clap hands)

There'll be one spring CHICKEN sitting in the hay!

The trickiest thing about this was putting the eggs up on the board in front of my storytime families without revealing the chick in side the last egg.

For my early literacy handout, I made a "Talk Together" activity sheet to promote letter recognition and discussion about starting sounds of words.

For at home use only

Since it was spring break at the local school district, I ended storytime with a craft. I don't usually do this at storytime but thought that a more diverse group age-wise might make storytime a better fit for families with children of multiple ages.

I had purchased some felt spring shapes from the dollar bin at Target. I had cardstock and glitter on hand and supplemented with some Easter basket grass (paper). This allowed kids to make a spring tableau using the felt shapes. I CONTROLLED ALL THE GLITTER APPLICATION. I knew from past experience that this was the only way glitter would work! The result was minimal glitter on the floor. Success!

Everything Green

Today at storytime we celebrated the color GREEN.
In addition to recognizing St. Patrick's Day, we also recognized that winter is over and spring is on the way - which means the world will soon turn green again.


I couldn't believe how many green-themed books were available for storytime. I think it's one color that is highly recognizable by young children and it is found in a variety of areas (nature, food, animals) which makes it a color into which many themes can be combined.


Here are the books that were shared at storytime today :

"Green : Seeing Green All Around Us" by Sarah Schuette from the "Colors All Around Us" series is a good starter for a green-themed storytime. Large photos illustrate the green objects being described in the rhyming text.

"The Great Big Green" by Peggy Gifford is a fun guessing game - the book's text asks the reader to try and guess what the great big green thing is. Turns out it's the earth ... which is also blue!

"Good Luck Bear" by Greg Foley from his series of books about bear was my token St. Patrick's Day book. Actually, it's not about St. Patrick's Day so much as it is about four-leafed clovers, but that's about as in-depth on St. Patrick's Day as you want to get with a bunch of 3-and-4-year olds.

Ended with "Green" by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, one of my favorite books about the color green.

We also sang "Five Green & Speckled Frogs" and I highlighted singing as my early literacy tip. I handed out this activity sheet for families to take home as an extension activity.

For home use only

I also shared another guessing game "What Is Green?" through a flannel board story. I described the green thing that I was thinking of and for the most part kids were able to guess what I was describing. For some reason 'snake' was a tricky one ... but they eventually got it. Nice thing to use since most of these flannel pieces were "borrowed" from other flannel stories I own, making varied use out of other pieces that I'd made in the past.

For my grand finale I had brought along my fiddle! I played two tunes, "Sheebeg & Sheemore", perhaps the first Irish fiddle tune most folks learn, and after playing I asked kids (based on how the tune sounded) what they though Sheebeg and Sheemore were. Boats? Flowers? Girls? No! Turns out the song is about two mountains in the misty, cloudy Irish landscape (actually, they are two mountains beneath which a big ol' battle happened with lots of death and destruction, but I didn't mention that part). I also played "The Road to Lisdoonvarna" which is a nice tune with a rocking beat meant to represent walking down a road.

Then ...GREEN SNACKS!

Fun storytime all around.

Colors Everywhere

Oh my goodness, it has been a long, long time since I posted a storytime overview on my blog.
Time to get back to work!


Today's theme was all about COLORS ... and naturally when deciding what to wear today I was not thinking and essentially dressed in all black (note to self : when prepping for a color-themed storytime send yourself a note to wear an outfit with lots of different colors).

To start storytime I introduced the classic song "I Can Sing a Rainbow" (I learned this in Girl Scouts, copious YouTube links of this song exist,). I enhanced the song with flannel pieces which I placed in an arc as I sang the song to form a rainbow -- this works much better than laying out strips of curved flannel ... which never line up and display crooked.

Our letter of the day today was the complicated letter "C" ... I explained that sometimes the "C" makes an "sss" sound, like the word circle, and sometimes the "C" makes a "kkk" sound, like cat, cookie and color. Ah English, always tricky ...

The books I shared varied in length and complexity. I always front-load my storytime with the longer stories and end with fairly simple books that use lots of dialogic reading (for those restless toddlers and young preschoolers who are pretty much done with storytime 15-20 minutes in).

I shared the story "Lunch!" by Denise Fleming with a grab bag of colored food and a hungry mouse puppet. Very fun ... except when storytime was over I realized I'd left the sad blue blueberry inside the bag. Oh well, no blue food for my mouse today.

Finally I re-told the story of Emma Dodd's dog from "Dog's Colorful Day" with a fantastic flannel

created by one of my co-workers. This led to my activity sheet for the day based on the early literacy tip "Talk Together" which was designed not only to reinforce color recognition but to encourage caregivers to extend the story with their child by talking about the different objects that went into making dog so colorful by the end of the story.

Nighty-Night : Bedtime Books

50+ year old Meg

Storytime may happen in the morning right after we've all gotten out of bed, but that's no reason to NOT celebrate the closing of the day! All our stories today were about bedtime, going to sleep, and what happens at night. I wore my flannel jammies (which was a bit of a mistake in early August ...), fuzzy slippers and brought my oldest, dearest teddy to storytime.


Here are the books we shared today :

I whipped out my old Monkey Mitt with the pom-pom monkeys and got out a toy telephone and we
all chanted the "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" rhyme ... some things never grow old, do they?



A fun song to sing (or game to play) is "Five in the Bed" -- we shared this today as a flannel :

Don't forget to include the last line where the littlest bear hogs the big feather bed all to himself, complete with a big feather pillow -- good night!



 Finally, we ended with a very sweet bedtime story courtesy of Amy Hest. "Kiss Goodnight" tells the story of Sam who is waiting and waiting for that one special something to conclude a proper bedtime. Can you guess what it is? Yes, a giant goodnight kiss (AGAIN!). We shared this story with the fabulous prop set from Book Props. Unfortunately, this prop is no longer available, but with a little effort could be made into a fabulous feltboard prop!

Our early literacy tip today was "Write Together!" -- to that end, I handed out an activity sheet designed for the earliest letter writers to use in working on control of their marker, pencil or crayon. Simply trace the dotted red lines as you tell Sam's story and list each of the things he needs (plus a kiss!) before going to sleep.

For at-home use only.

 

Beautiful Butterflies

Caterpillars, moths, cocoons, butterflies and chrysalises -- today we celebrated the wonder that is the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly or moth.

Here are the books we shared :

I took the tried and ever so true song/fingerplay "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and tweaked it for today's theme :
The itsy bitsy caterpillar
Crawled upon a leaf
She munched on some milkweed
Just like it was roast beef (yum!)
Curled into a chrysalis ... (snore)
And when her time was through ...
Unfurled her wings
And into the sky she flew!
Your caterpillar is your wiggly index finger.
A leaf can be the palm of one hand.
Tuck your finger into a fist for the chrysalis.
To make the butterfly, hook your thumbs together and wiggle your fingers for the butterfly wings.

Our flannel story for today also involved chrysalises (we do love our Monarch butterflies in Minnesota).

This idea was purposefully stolen from the awesome Miss Mary Liberry who provided not only the artistic inspiration but the text for the rhyme as well :

Five little caterpillars and not one more,
One made a chrysallis (see??) and now there are four.

Four little caterpillars sitting on a tree
One made a chrysallis and now there are three ...

... big job to do ... now there are two
... basking in the sun ... now there's just one
... knew his work was almost done ... now there are none

BUT ...

One chrysallis opened up underneath the sun
Now there's a beautiful butterfly and that makes one!

... with the morning dew ... that makes two
... shade of the tree ... that makes three
... spreading her wings galore ... now there are four
... feeling so alive ... at last there are five


We concluded our Butterfly Storytime with a group re-telling of the familiar "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. I used a large caterpillar puppet (old Folkmanis stock) and the monarch butterfly puppet as well as flannel pieces for all the food Mr. Caterpillar ate.



Our handout for today was to encourage the "Play Together" aspect of ECRR2.
"The Very Hungry Caterpillar BINGO" game is something everyone can enjoy, so I sent home a sheet with BINGO cards as well as the images for drawing pieces to play the game. This BINGO game comes courtesy of articulation360 :



For at home use only -- please do not distribute outside of your home