Flannel Friday: Ten Eggs in a Nest by Marilyn Sadler

 This flannel accompanies the book Ten Eggs in a Nest  by Marilyn Sadler, though it sounds very similar to the flannel rhyme "Ten Fluffy Chicks" that has been done a lot over the past couple years.

That rhyme can be found here Ten Fluffy Chicks

Ten Eggs in a Nest: Gwen the Hen does not count her eggs before they hatch (smart hen!) and patiently waits.  Red Rooster, on the other hand, is so excited that as soon as one egg hatches, he struts over to the store to buy ONE worm with ONE coin for ONE baby chick.

Red returns home to discover that TWO more chicks have hatched so he heads back to the store to buy TWO worms for TWO more baby chicks using TWO coins.

This continues until...

 All 10 baby chicks have arrived

Red Rooster buys worms with coins (this adorable mini cloth bag is perfect for this flannel prop):

Young readers learn how to do (or review) simple addition in this begin-to-read book.  If you are trying to incorporate more STEAM or STEM elements into your storytimes, I think this is a fun way to do that.  

(Some more on STEAM:  http://www.steamedu.com/ or http://showmelibrarian.blogspot.com/p/all-things-steam.html)

Activity: Buy ONE worm with ONE coin

When I do this in storytime, I will probably hand each child ONE "coin" after I read the book.  Their adults will have to tell them it's ok, but after storytime they can use it to buy ONE worm from me (gummy worm). Our library attracts large groups of kids so I'll have to have additional staff around for this activity.

Bringing storytimes home to Grayden, my almost 3-year-old:

Wiggle Worms 9-17-12

Short blog post but I wanted to give you the template for "10 Fluffy Chicks"

http://sunflowerstorytime.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/10-fluffy-chicks2.pdf

 

 

Those cute little black bird finger puppets are from folkmanis.com, but you can buy locally.

 



Pre-K April 12, 2012 The Last of Eggs and Chickens for a while....

I've been enjoying eggs and chickens these past few weeks and finally got to use this theme for Pre-K.  But Spring as sprung and Easter has passed, so it's time to move on...

Memory Box:  A cube (imagine my surprise when some of the kids identified it as such) from The Most Wonderful Egg in the World.

Game:  Egg or No Egg?  The children helped us decide which category to put the animals in.  Some were a little tricky (like snakes, because most snakes lay eggs, but not all....) but these kids know their stuff!

Books:

The Most Wonderful Egg in the World by Helme Heine.  I adapt this story quite a bit.

I totally copied Abby the Librarian's flannel for this book.  She kindly gave me permission to post though.  She has a great blog and also came up with the Memory Box idea that we all love so much.

Abby's blog post

Roly-Poly Egg by Kali Stileman. I love this lively, colorful story about Splotch and her roly poly little egg which is returned safely to her in time to hatch.

Charlie Chick:  We read this short pop-up book just for fun!  We then found Charlie with this rhyme "Six Little Chicks"

Music:

"The Chicken Dance"

"I Know a Chicken".  This song is a little long, but I still love it.  We shook eggs with hen puppets and danced like chickens.

Wiggle Worms April 9, 2012

Since I couldn't do all my favorite chick/egg stuff in one week, it carried over into this week's Wiggle Worms.

Today we:

Animal Puppet Song:  "If Animals Could Dance" (sorry not in our collection).
If animals could dance they'd look so funny
A cat would dance and look like this
And sound like this
(cow, dog, duck, elephant)

Letter of the Day:  Ll for lion

Book: Charlie Chick by Nick Denchfield

Music:

We danced with a big lion puppet  and scarves to Laurie Berkner's The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

We tried out "The Chicken Dance" again this week with much greater success!!

Flannel:  Six Little Chicks
This is a flannel I came up with a few months ago and have used it a couple of different ways.  Today we looked for Charlie Chick (a yellow chick). 

Six little eggs getting ready to hatch (6 fingers)
Peck, peck, peck..... (peck hand)
Crack!! (Clap while removing the top part of the egg)

Finger Play:  Two Little Blackbirds
Katie Crow (a blackbird) squawked until we did her favorite rhyme.  Here she is hanging out with one of our lovely staff members.

Wiggle Worms April 3, 2012

To celebrate spring, we did some chick activities in toddler storytime.

Animal Puppet Song:  Raffi's version of Grandpa's Farm.  We practiced our farm animals signs with this song.

Letter of the Day:  Ee for egg

Book:  Hurry! Hurry! by Eve Bunting. All the animals on the farm hurry to meet the newest baby; a chick who hatches from an egg.  Instead of "hatching" a chick puppet from a prop egg like I usually do, I tried something new.

All the parents were handed an egg to hold with their child while we read the story.  They were instructed not to OPEN the egg (I spelled "OPEN" so the kids wouldn't fixate on the word) and to hold the egg and keep it warm while we read the story.  I also forewarned the kids they would have to give the eggs back (which they're good at because we use shakers, scarves, bells, balls, sock puppets, etc. each week that they hand back).  I also showed them a bucket of colorful eggs filled with surprises so they knew they would leave with an egg when storytime was over.

Once we got to the part where the chick hatches, they all opened their eggs to find chicks inside!

Two or three kids had a hard time returning their chicks on Monday, so for Tuesday's group I gave them a little more time to bond with their chicks and pet them.  Then we played Bibbity Boppity Boo (A chick sat on my shoe) and moved the chicks around our bodies.  They were much more willing to part with their chicks since they got to hang out for a few minutes.

Music:  We danced to my favorite version of "Shake Your Sillies Out" again.  We also get to kick our kickers out, jump our jumpers out, hug our huggers out, etc.

Flannel:  10 Fluffy Chicks
http://sunflowerstorytime.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/10-fluffy-chicks2.pdf

5 eggs and 5 eggs (hold up five fingers and five fingers)
That makes ten
Sitting on top is mother hen (sign for hen like we do in "Grandpa's Farm"
Crack Crack Crack (clap, clap, clap for cracking eggs)
What do I see?
Ten fluffy chicks as yellow as can be

(The chicks are on the other sides of the eggs, so we flip the eggs around when they hatch)

 

Finger Play:  "Mama Duck" with puppet props

Here comes the Mama Duck - Quack
Here comes the Mama Duck - Quack
Here comes the Mama Duck with one little duckling - Quack

Here comes the Mama Duck - Quack, Quack
Here comes the Mama Duck - Quack, Quack
Here comes the Mama Duck with two little ducklings - Quack, Quack

etc...

Movement: "Chicken Dance"

Chick flannel

Here is the chick flannel we did last week.  An all original Tara Chmielowski flannel pattern and words!

Thanks to my new fancy phone, posting pics is easy!

Little chick, little chick
can you do a special trick?

Little chick, little chick
can you do another trick?

(The chick changes color each time we ask it to do another trick....saving the best trick for last)

Wiggle Worms 1-9-12 Chicks!

People often ask me where I get my flannel ideas from.  Today's flannel was something I came up with on Friday when I decided I wanted to do something new and didn't like any of the "chick" or "egg" flannels I was finding online.  My co-workers threw some words out that rhyme with "chick" and once I ruled out "finger lickin' good" LOL, I decided our chick would do tricks.

Animals Song: "If Animals Could Dance".  Yes, if animals could dance, they'd look very funny!  In this song the toddlers dance along with the puppets and make animal sounds.

Letter of the Day: Ee for egg

Book:  Hurry! Hurry! by Eve Bunting.  In this simple, colorful book all the animal are hurrying to the barn yard to see what all the excitement is about.  As the chick hatches in the book, I break open a big plastic egg to reveal a chick finger puppet.  I got the large egg last Easter in the holiday aisle in Wal-mart (filled with Pop Rocks) and painted it white.

Movement:  We shook shaky eggs and danced with a hen (puppet) to the song "I Know a Chicken"

Flannel: I should take a picture to post, but for now here is a description.  I made several flannel chicks in different colors and put them inside flannel eggs.  The first chick was yellow and could do a fancy trick: turn blue.  Then we asked

"Little chick, little chick,

Can you do another trick?"

to make him change colors a few more times.  The last chick had black polka dots!