Wiggle Worms July 26, 2012

Sorry there are no fancy pictures today, but I wanted to get this up because a mom asked me about my music so I said I'd link in my blog.

Music:

"Good Morning Song" from Wiggle and Whirl or http://www.weebeemusic.com/

"If I was a Bird" from Wiggleworms CD.  I named my toddler program before knowing about these Old Town School of Folk Music CDs, but they are by far my favorite CDs for kids.

"Airplane Song" by Laurie Berkner.  I almost used "We Are the Dinosuars" from the same album because they both tie into the book WOW! City!

Bubble songs:

The song I prefer to play wasn't reading on my CD so I used my old bubble songs from Sara Hickman's Toddler CD.  I played "Get Up Everybody", "Ten Little Bubbles", and "Walking Walking"

Finger Plays:

"Helicopter Rhyme":

The helicoptor flies up
The helicopter flies down
It flies around and around and around

The helicoptor flies left
The helicoptor flies right
It flies up up up and out of site

Row, Row, Row (sign language)

Row, row, row your boat
Row it all around
If if you see a ______
Make that sound

(We filled the blanks in with the signs for cat, bird, and tiger)

I'm Driving in My Car (We always end Wiggle Worms with this rhyme)

I'm driving in my car
I'm driving i my car
Beep beep!  Toot toot! 
I'm drving in my car

I'm driving really fast....

I'm driving really slow...

Book: WOW! City! by Robert Neubecker.  A little girl is amazined by all the city sights.

Flannel:

We made a sandwhich for bear this week

Pre-K June 21, 2012 Bananas!

Theme: Bananas!

34 kids

7 siblings

16 adults

Sometimes storytime feels a little crazy for me, but I hope all the kids are still having fun.  I really enjoy programming for each of the age groups for different reasons and the most work goes into Pre-K by far, but there's such a big pay off when I get to interact with them.

Each child picked a laminated fruit on their way in to hold on to for later (which was a little bit of a distraction during storytime for some).  My reasons were: 1.) They never get to pick their color when I hand stuff out so I think it's fun to give them an opportunity to think and choose.  This does not work when passing stuff out during storytime because it would take forever by the time the kids are done contemplating which color they want and 2.) I would be handing out shakers later and handing out two things at once would be too much of a commotion.

Memory Box:  Bee from Beautiful Bananas

Books:

Gladys Goes Out to Lunch by Derek Anderson. Gladys the Gorilla is distracted from her usual meal of bananas by a delicious scent and follows the scent all over until discovering that it is......banana bread!

Beautiful Bananas by Elizabeth Laird. On her way to her grandfather's house with a bunch of bananas, Beatrice has a series of mishaps with jungle animals who each substitute something new for what she's carrying.

Banana! by Ed Vere.  Two monkeys have one banana and learn how to share.  I would love to use this awesome book in storytime, but would need the right co-presenter to "act" it out with.

Music:

"B-Banana" (I used Carole Peterson's version, but I'm sure there are other/better ones out there).  The gist of it is:

B-banana
Peel banana
Eat banana
Go bananas

"Fruit Salad Salsa" by Laurie Berkner.  We identified our fruits and then each child received a shaker at this point.  They did a great job of standing up when they heard their fruit!!  But can I say I CAN'T WAIT to stop using CDs and a Wal-Mart radio to play music.  As soon as my I-Pod is up and running I can start using a louder system; it was pretty hard to hear the words.

Here's a picture of two of my favorite guys all stickered up displaying the laminated fruit:

"Apples and Bananas"

Letter(s) of the Day:  AEIOU (yes, some kids even knew those were called vowels).  We sang "Apples and Bananas".  I used the Kimbo version, but it's just what I had on hand; there are a bunch of other versions out there.

I totally should have done "Bananas in Pajamas"!  Oh well, next time......

Pre-K June 14, 2012 Mice!

Today was a way smaller storytime than usual (50 people total) but a little rough.  I still had fun and I know the kids did too.  There are so many great books about mice and many of them make great props so it's one of my favorite themes.  And HUGE thanks to Lesley for making the video work!!!

Memory box:  Bear from A New House for Mouse

Famous mice:  I love playing the "famous" game and seeing who the kids recognize.  They were right on today!

Books:

A New House for Mouse by Petr Horacek.  When a mouse find an apple that is too big for her house, she searches for a new, bigger home.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff.  We all know what happens when you give a mouse a cookie....

Aww man!  The green crayon is backwards oh well.

Music:  We danced to Raffi's "Shake My Sillies Out"

Flannel:  Mouse wanted a sandwich and let me know exactly what he wanted on it!  Our teen volunteer used this adorable Melissa & Doug Sandwich Set that I got from Barnes and Noble to build the sandwich as I pointed to and sounded out the words.

Music and prop activity:

I played this video so the kids could see how the mice and monster interact in the song "The Mice Go Marching" by Hap Palmer.

I then handed out stuffed mice for them to act out the song with while playing the video again.  I bought 55 so that each child could have one.  On smaller attendance days, I toss the extra mice into the air when the mice tumble around in the song.  The kids catch on and mice start flying.  It's so funny!

Wiggle Worms July 11, 2012

Cassie, a teen volunteer on summer break, helped present storytime today.  We had

38 kids
11 siblings (babies and school age)
31 adults


Animal puppet song:  Old MacDonald

Letter of the Day: Pp for penguin from our book

Book:  Mommy, Carry Me Please.  Various baby animals ask their mothers to carry them.

Activity:  We handed out finger puppets I bought from IKEA (I really like these because they fit little fingers nicely) and played "Carry me please" and carried the puppets on various body parts like in the book.

Music: The finger puppets danced to "Elephants Have Wrinkles"

Flannels: 

I bought this adorable, good quality Melissa & Doug sandwich set from Barnes & Noble over the weekend and just had to use it today.  To make it a literacy activity, I typed up Mouse's sandwich order and pointed to each word and read it out loud as Cassie assembled the sandwich.

We also played "Little Mouse, Little Mouse are you in the ________ house?"

Summer Reading Storytime: Coyotes!

This program was for the older kids (6-8 yrs) who sometimes get left out of library programming during the school year.  This program was about 40 minutes total, but the kids were so well behaved I could have easily added a book or activity.

Our summer reading theme celebrates Arizona's Centennial so this storytime featured desert critters and coyotes.

As the children checked in, they filled out a name tag and got to pick out which bandanna they wanted to use during the program.

To break the ice, we got silly with the "Stand Up Sit Down Song" which is an awesome song I found on cdbaby.com

Our first book was Stone Pizza by Susan Mitchell. This is a retelling of the classic tale Stone Soup with a clever coyote who gets the critters to share their food with him and each other.   It is a little long and the coyote put the sauce on last (which wouldn't work for my prop) so I shortened it a bit and changed the order.  Six children got a prop and brought their prop up to build the pizza as I got to that part in the book.

It was time to get up and move again so we dramatically sang "I am a Pizza" which I think is one of the funnest songs ever.  The final lines are "I was a pizza / I was the best / I was a pizza / Now I'm a mess" and I dumped our flannel pizza from the Stone Pizza all over the floor and it really did make a mess.

Our next book was Let's Play in the Forest While the Wolf is Not Around by Claudia Rueda.

We played the game "Let's play in the desert while the coyote is not around."  Several children received a desert animal puppet to hold onto until Lesley called them up to ask, "Coyote, are you there?"  I hid behind the storytime cart with my coyote puppet and popped his head up so he could answer the kids.  Coyote was busy putting his shorts and shirt on, cleaning his ears (I threw q-tips into the audience), picking his nose, flossing and brushing his teeth, etc.  In retrospect, I should have had him going to the bathroom because that would have been super funny.

To end storytime, we did an activity that everyone got to participate in: A bandanna story.  Everyone knows coyotes and cowboys wear bandannas!  I spruced up this story http://guidezone.e-guiding.com/jalittle.htm

Everyone got to make a coyote bookmark to take home.  It was a simple craft, but each child got to pick their sparkly bookmark color, a bandana, and a colorful eye.

I had such a great time with these kids and my co-worker Lesley!!

Pre-K Fish June 7, 2012

Today we read about fish which was really fun!
44 kids
6 siblings
26 adults

Books:

Maisy Goes to the Library by Lucy Cousins. Maisy goes to the library to find a book about fish and ends up enjoying storytime with her friends while she is there.

Hooray for Fish! by Lucy Cousins.  Little Fish introduces us to some colorful fish, but his favorite fish of all is his mom.  This is a great storytime book because it is oversized with really colorful pictures and lends itself to audience discussion.  Plus, it's fun to give fishy kisses at the end.

Sea Creatures Pop Up.  I don't read this book, I just show the pictures.  Two of the big hits were the Sea Dragon and Lion Fish.

Music:

"Move Your Arms Like Henry".  Usually I'm not a huge Wiggles fan, but this song is cute to do with ribbons.  Henry, the Octopus, dances along.

"Goldfish". We LOVE this song!  The fish do all sorts of silly things and say, "Wait a minute!  We're fish!  We don't fill in the blank.  Let's go swimming...."

Memory Box and Letter of the Day:

Ostrich from Maisy goes to the Library was in the memory box (he's the Librarian who does storytime!)

Oo for Ostrich and Octopus (the kids determined that of fish, ostrich, and octopus, fish did not start with the letter O)

Flannel:

Can I say how bummed I get when my flannel pieces disappear (especially since I spend late nights working on them after the baby goes to bed).  Anyway, I had six fish that I wanted to add to the bowl, but first we had to think of a word that rhymed with the color and that's how the fish earned his way into the bowl.

These kids were AMAZING today!  Sometimes they shout random words out to me, but after pointing out the rhymes in Hooray for Fish, they were right on track with this flannel activity.  I could only think of one word to rhyme with yellow (fellow), but they came up with mellow, jello, and hello!