Happy Birthday! Pre-K May 10, 2012

Our 2012 Summer Reading theme celebrates Arizona's Centennial so I chose to do some birthday-ish stuff in storytime today.  Registration starts May 24 at www.mcldaz.org/summer and you can begin redeeming prizes on June 1st.

56 kids
4 siblings
36 adults

Books:

Little Mouse and the Big Cupcake by Thomas Taylor.  A very small mouse finds a large chocolate chip and raspberry cream cupcake and must ask for help from his friends to get it home.

It kind of hurt my heart a little bit to make this big beautiful flannel cupcake and then cut it up, but that's the way the cookie crumbles (or cupcake gets eaten).  As each animal takes a bite, we remove a little piece of the cupcake until it's all gone.  Finally the mouse looks inside (under) the cupcake wrapper to find a perfect little mouse piece.

A Birthday for Cow by Jan Thomas.  Despite the objections of Pig and Mouse, Duck insists on including a turnip in the birthday celebration.

(I went to the store last night to buy a real turnip to show the kids, but the tops and bottoms were cut off so they didn't look very turnip-y.  Instead, I showed them some pictures of turnips before reading the story.)

I'm very lucky that the Adult Services Librarian is so fond of me (gush) because she volunteers to help make storytime awesome.  It would be so much less fun without interactive props and banter.  She read this book while I brought Duck to life with a stiff felt turnip. 

Music: 

We used shakers to dance to "The Crazy Shakedown" (sorry, not in collection).  We got some practice in touching our toes to noses.

Our birthday storytime ended with a very sticky song, "Sticky Bubble Gum" (sorry, not in our collection).  I fast forward 35 seconds in right as we start to blow our very very big bubbles (which of course POP).

Letter of the Day:  We each had our own Letter of the Day because we chanted "Pat-a-Cake" twice using our own initials to draw onto our palms

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man
Bake me a cake as fast as you can
Pat it and prick it and mark it with a ____
Put it in the oven for baby and me

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man
Bake me a cake as fast as you can
Roll it and roll it
And toss it in a pan!
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man
Flannel:  Balloons, Balloons
from http://jackiemarrs.blogspot.com/2012/01/birthday-storytime-toddlerpre-school.html