Glow-in-the-Dark Storytime

I loved everything about this program (minus the iPod incident)!!!

The program started at 6, right as it got really dark outside.  I was able to adjust the lighting in the room by having my lovely co-worker (Julie) sprint back and forth to the light switches at designated times.  Even with both lights off, the room wasn't pitch black on account of the dim emergency light that stays on, but did get pretty dark.

Opening: "Bread and Butter" Watch here as the amazing Jbrary duo shares this chant

Bread and butter
Marmalade and jam
Let's say hello as quiet as we can

(loud, fast, slow, high, low)

Books:

The Very Lonely Firefly by Eric Carle: One night a very lonely firefly goes in search of some friends. Each time he sees a light he flies toward it, but none of them are fireflies.  Finally he finds lots of flickering friends (the book has little light bulbs that light up).
(Lights on except for at the end) 

I introduced the kids to my Folkmanis firefly light-up puppet

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise:  I used to think this book was so dull.... until I had kids. Now I think it is so charming with the perfect amount of repetition and randomness.
(This book only works in big book format for a storytime.  The lights were completely off and Julie used a flashlight to illuminate the pages and highlight the specific items the text mentioned).

Duck's Not Afraid of the Dark by Ethan Long: Duck insists that he's not afraid of the dark, but he does prefer to leave the light on!
(Lights dim so that the kids could still see the illustrations, but appreciate the light I was switching on and off.)

Nighttime Nursery Rhymes: A Bedtime Shadow Book: I used a flashlight to project the images onto the wall and shared "Hey Diddle Diddle", "Little Boy Blue", and "Star Bright".
(Lights off, obviously)

 

Flannel: "Five Little Firecrackers"

5 little firecrackers getting ready to zoom (hold up 5 fingers)
Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, sizzle (wiggle fingers upward, building anticipation)
BOOM (clap hands above head)

4.... 3.... 2... 1...

My last exploded firecracker has starts that light up.  Random clearance find at Target last year.

This rhyme starts with the red, unexploded firecrackers on the board.  Each time we got to the "BOOM", Julie would slap the exploded firecracker over them.

Songs:

"Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" (Lights off)
I turned the lights off and we used these finger lights (left over SRP prizes) to sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".  It was really beautiful to see all the lights!

"Cha Cha Slide" (Lights off)
Every child got two glow bracelets to wear (and keep) while dancing the "Cha Cha Slide".  This was probably the highlight of night!  I'm glad I didn't got with "The Hokey Pokey" or something.  The parents got DOWN, the kids dug it!

Right as it started to play... my new, Black Friday, fully-charged iPod went black.  As I started panicking, Alyson, a high school student who was babysitting my kids at storytime, pulled out her iPhone, found the song on YouTube, and plugged it into my sound system with my auxiliary cord!!!  As Dar Williams would say, "Teenagers kick our butts,"..... mine anyway!

Craft: Light-Up Fireflies
We made these guys using Easter eggs, LED tea lights, google eye stickers, and used strips of duct tape to attach paper wings that I pre-cut.

 My little sweetheart holding a firefly... and my brother-in-law lounging in the background LOL

As much as I want to pretend this was an original idea, I must admit I first saw it at http://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/09/21/steal-story-time-glow-dark..... but Kristy Raffensberger was practically begging me to "steal" it!

Hats

Who knew that doing a hat theme would be so timely in Arizona!?  The A/C just can't handle our excessive heat streak and temps are just awful everywhere - even indoors.  Our "hats" (paper plates) made wonderful fans during storytime.

 

 Books:

Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina.  See my flannel here 

The kids put their hats (paper plates) on their heads and acted out the monkeys' part.  So fun!

Don't Worry Douglas by David Melling.  Douglas is so thrilled with his new wool hat he can't help but bounce around and do cartwheels!  When his hat turns into a "long strand of spaghetti" his friends try to help him out.

 Meet Douglas

 My co-presenter wrapped yarn around me and the furniture so the kids could see Douglas' hat unravel.

 Silly Little Goose by Nancy Tafuri.  Goose looks everywhere to find a place to make a nest and finally finds a warm, cozy, quiet hat to lay her eggs in.

 Music:
 "B-Banana / Monkey See Monkey Do" by Carole Peterson.  Listen to song here

YouTube Video: "I Got a Hat" by the Learning Station
I projected this video on the wall and the kids danced using their own hats (paper plates) to follow the directions.

"I got a hat.
It's a baseball hat.
Put in on my head and give it a tap.
Then I spin around a clap. 
Then I spin around my hat." (place hat on floor and circle around it).

Game: Whose Hat?

 

Flannel: Teddy Wore His

Teddy wore his yellow shirt, yellow shirt, yellow shirt (pat arms)
Teddy wore his yellow shirt all day long
...pants (pat legs)
....shoes (pat feet)
....hat (pat head)

Frogs Pre-K and Family

Flannel Friday:  "Fred the Frog"
Listen to song here


At the edge of the pond
I caught a little tadpole (wiggle hands)
I named him Fred
and I put him in a fish bowl (make fish bowl with arms)
I watched him wiggle and swim around (wiggle hands)
And then one day guess what I found?


Fred's tail was getting smaller (put hands close together)
And Fred's head was getting larger (make large head over your head with your arms)
Fred had ONE leg (musical "boing") growing strong (extend one arm)
We knew he'd be a frog before too long


The song keeps going that he had
TWO legs... (extend 2 arms)
THREE legs...  (extend 2 arms and a leg)
FOUR legs ... (hop like a frog)

Finally he's a frog and hops away and we do too.

 The tadpole is about 14 inches and the bowl about 2 ft wide.  I put the tadpoles in the bowl one at a time as directed by the song - I just photographed them together.

 Fred becomes a frog:

For more storytime ideas, check out Katie's Storytime Secrets for this week's roundup.
Fore more Flannel Friday information, check out:  this website or Facebook Group



Letter of the Day: Ff (storytime was July 3rd)

Flannel (Day before Fourth of July)
"Five Firecrackers"

See post here: http://storytimewithmisstara.blogspot.com/2014/07/firecrackers-2014s-version.html

Books:

We read:
The Wide-Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulker - a great pop-up book!
Down by the Cool of the Pool by Tony Mitton
Ah Ha! by Jeff Mack - a tricky one to read, but funny if you can pull it off
Frogs by Nic Bishop - I showed them various colored frogs, bullfrogs, and toads

Olive the Fox (fox starts with F too!) feeling patriotic

 Having a small group (25 kids) in storytime the day before July 4th worked nicely because they all got a turn playing the frog on the way out the door.

 The lovely Miss Erica!  Oh I adore her!

Pizza Party! Pre-K and Family Storytimes

The kids guessed it!  Pizza is my favorite food ever! 

I've never done a pizza storytime before and it really was a blast and the kids were great (except for an incident at the very end - detailed at the end of this post).

Signs (ASL) for Pizza: See signs here

Memory Box:  Snake from "Hi, Pizza Man!"

Books:
Pizza for Sam by Mary Labatt.  This is a begin-to-read book so it's fairly small but the story is still cute.  I made props and used this puppet to bring the book to life and make it easier to "see".

This works best with a "helper" puppeteering Sam because she has a lot of emotion and actions in this book like jumping up on the chair, sniffing, flopping on the ground, and feeling disappointed, hopeful, and happy.

 

Meet Sam.  She's just a puppy trying to figure out what puppy should eat.

Her owners have a party and Sam gets caught a few times sniffing out the snacks the guests have brought. 

 

Her owner gives her dog food, but Yuck!  Dog food does not seem like a good food for puppies.  Poor Sam.

 

When everyone is distracted, look who gets her paws on the pizza!

"Hi, Pizza Man!" by Virginia Walter.  When the pizza man comes, we say, "Hi, Pizza Man!"  But what if it wasn't a pizza man?  What if it was a pizza woman or a pizza cat or a pizza snake?...

This is a super interactive book that is out of print so I bought a used copy from amazon and think it's definitely worth it for a pizza storytime!

Music:

"Pizza Dance" by Laughing Pizza.  Listen here  This song is so cheesy (haha) but really fun!

 

Watch video of my group dancing here 

 

"I am a Pizza" by Linda Arnold.  Listen here
There are lots of versions, but I used the one above.  It's really fun to act out the building of a pizza in this call-and-response song and then the pizza's sad demise at the end:

......"Out of the oven
Into the box
Into the car
and upside down
I am a pizza.... dropped on the ground
I was a pizza
I was the best
I was a pizza
Now I'm a mess"

Letter of the Day:  Pp for pizza
Pepperoni also starts with P... which led into a "discussion" about the other toppings that can go on pizza... which led into our last activity.

Flannel Activity:

I read the poem "A Pizza the Size of the Sun" by Jack Prelutsky and we imagined how big this pizza really is!
Read poem here

Afterwards, we managed to arrange the kids into a large enough circle to build a large (70") pizza in the middle. My awesome co-worker helped build the pizza as the kids recalled ingredients from the poem (pizza dough, sauce, cheese, red and green peppers, mushrooms, peas, sausage, olives, tomatoes).

 

Note to fellow programmers:
Then we sang the goodbye song and everything was great until in a lapse of judgement I told the kids that if they were gentle they could touch the big pizza and naively imagined them pretending to eat it while parents took pictures... but they descended on it like" zombies" - literally tearing the props apart.  So unless you have a mellow group, I would leave this prop as HANDS OFF!

Soup! Pre-K and Family Storytime

It is finally cold enough to do a soup storytime in Arizona.  I even hear it will be 36 degrees tonight.  Hmmm I wonder how many families will brave the "cold" and come to evening Family Storytime this evening....

Pre-K Storytime:
44 kids
4 siblings
36 adults

Books:

Duck Soup by Jackie Urbanovic.  Maxwell Duck is perfecting his own soup recipe and goes into his garden to pick some herbs.  When his friends find a feather in the soup (really a bay leaf), they fear he has fallen in.

While I read, my co-worker played the parts of the various animals including Max spicing up his soup and his friends' rescue methods.

Soup for One by Ethan Long.   A little fly who anticipates enjoying a big bowl of soup is unexpectedly joined by 9 other bugs.

I used a punch bowl stuffed with red butcher paper to bring this book to life.

These little bugs are left over Summer Reading Prizes.  My enterprising Librarian self loves holding onto goodies like these because I always find a fun way to use them in programs.

As the bugs exit the soup (on account of the lizard), my co-worker tossed them humorously up in the air behind her!  Finally a spider (puppet) swoops in for the last few drops of soup.

Storytiming does a cute flannel version of this book.  

Letter(s) of the Day:

We used jump ropes (also old leftover SRP prizes) to spell out the letters S, O, U, P.  Honestly, it was a bit too crazy with 45 kids and I should have used my common sense and abandoned the activity.  Oh well.

Look at this clever cutie!

Music:  "I Feel Crazy so I Jump in the Soup" by Laurie Berkner
Listen here

We made round soup bowls with the jump ropes to sing this song:

I feel crazy so I jump in the soup X3
I jump jump jump in the soup

...swim...
...gallop...
...splash...
....sit.... 

Sitting in their soup and ready for another story:

Rhyme:
The soup is boiling up (bubble hands)
The soup is boiling up (bubble hands)
Stir it slow, around we go (stir)
The soup is boiling up (throw hands and feet UP or pop up)

I added some veggies to our soup as we sang the rhyme the few times.

I let the evening Family Storytime kiddos toss letter beanbags into the soup to make alphabet soup.  This group was much smaller and manageable.  It would NOT have worked in the morning group.

Miss Erica (my fabulously awesome co-worker) dressed as a Campbell's soup can:

Fun (literacy skill building) Soup Videos to Watch at Home:

Hippopotamus Soup

Chicken Soup with Rice - Do you remember this book for your childhood??!