Green

We've been talking about specific colors all this month in storytime. This week we talked about the color green. We noticed that many kids were wearing green on their shirts (or pants or socks), saw green books on the shelves, and talked about that usually, by this time of the year, the grass is green. Instead, our grass is once again white with snow. *Sigh*

Books:

Green by Patricia Stockland
Green: Seeing Green All Around Us by Sarah Schuette
Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

Grandpa Green by Lane Smith
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

Music:

I used two different songs this week, depending on the ages of my groups. For younger ones, I used G-R-E-E-N (sung to the tune of BINGO). "There's a color I like to wear and green is its name-o"...

The other song I used is Green, Green, Green - a song I learned from folk singer Ross Sutter that can be used with many colors:
"Green, green, green is the color of my clothing
Green, green, green is everything I wear
I wear green
So I can't be seen
I wear green because I am a hunter."

The tune is here. I usually do this with photo props and try to have the kids guess the last word/occupation in the song, so I usually save this one for somewhat older or more vocal kids.

Snack:

I debated on the snack, and went back and forth between bringing celery (no PB, of course) or some sort of green candy. I'm too scared of having someone choke to bring grapes. I caved and bought a bag of green candy spearmint leaves (like gumdrops). Half the kids wouldn't even touch them. Guess I should have gotten the celery after all.

Activity:

 I tried using a paint chip matching activity I had read about on Inner Child Fun, and gave each kid page with four different shades of green on it, and had many different pages with green pictures on the tables to have the kids match colors.
But... the kids didn't really get into it.

So I changed tracks for my other storytime sessions and had kids rip small pieces of green construction paper and glue them as leaves to a page with a bare tree trunk with branches.

Next week: Orange

Blue

We've been talking about specific colors all this month in storytime. This week we talked about the color blue. We looked around the library for things that were blue, noticed that I was wearing all blue, and wished that the sky was blue (instead of grey).

Books:

Blue by Patricia Stockland

The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle
Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle
Blue Chicken by Deborah Freedman
In a Blue Room by Jim Averbeck

Music:

For a song this week we sang Three Blue Pigeons (see previous post). I had never heard it before last week, but thought it would be perfect. It is easy enough for first time listeners to start singing along by the second or third verse. Very catchy too.

Snack:

Blueberries. Most of the kids just gobbled them up, but there were two that had never eaten them on their own (only in muffins and pie) and didn't care for them.

Activity:

Blue Jello Playdough
I used a recipe I found online to make blue playdough using jello. Gave each kid a chunk and we used our senses to see, hear, smell and touch (but not taste!) the playdough. The youngest ones were happy just manipulating the playdough - for the 3 and 4 year olds, we practiced rolling the playdough into "snakes", then used the snakes to make letters.

Three Blue Pigeons

Found a new song to use for my "Blue" theme for storytime next week: Three Blue Pigeons. I'm thinking about making 3 Mo Willems-style pigeons for the flannel board, but we'll see what I get time for.

There's a video of it here, but I couldn't find any sheet music/chords for it so I can play along with my autoharp (the kids just love when I pull out the autoharp). So for myself, and for anyone else, here are the lyrics and chords for Three Blue Pigeons.

C         G       C

Three blue pigeons

C          F      C

Sitting on a wall,

C         C      F    F       C          F      C

Three blue pigeons sitting on a wall.

(spoken): One flew away – oh no!

C         G       C

Two blue pigeons

C          F      C

Sitting on a wall,

C         C      F    F       C          F      C

Two blue pigeons sitting on a wall.

(spoken): One flew away – oh no!

C         G       C

One blue pigeons

C          F      C

Sitting on a wall,

C         C      F    F       C          F      C

One blue pigeons sitting on a wall.

(spoken): The last flew away – oh no!

C         G       C

No blue pigeons

C          F      C

Sitting on a wall,

C         C      F    F       C          F      C

No blue pigeons sitting on a wall.

(spoken): One flew back – hooray!

C         G       C

One blue pigeons

C          F      C

Sitting on a wall,

C         C      F    F       C          F      C

One blue pigeons sitting on a wall.

(spoken): One flew back – hooray!

C         G       C

Two blue pigeons

C          F      C

Sitting on a wall,

C         C      F    F       C          F      C

Two blue pigeons sitting on a wall.

(spoken): One flew back – hooray!

C         G       C

Three blue pigeons

C          F      C

Sitting on a wall,

C         C      F    F       C          F      C

Three blue pigeons sitting on a wall.

(spoken): The last flew back – hooray!

One World, Many Stories

This week I've been running around to all the classes in our elementary and middle schools to talk about the summer reading program. Between all the classes, I think I've talked to over 500 kids. Add that to all the preschools and daycares I covered in the last couple weeks, and I think I've seen just about every kid under the age of 14 that lives in our area at least once this month.

We are doing the theme "One World, Many Stories" for our summer reading program this year. Cool storytimes, fun prizes, and all that usual stuff (check it out on our website for more details). But what I'm really excited about is that we're working to put together a book of real-life stories from members of our community - both adults and kids. Got a great story? Please send it in to me!

We did an abbreviated storytime this week, since I talked to the kids here about the summer reading program as well. I did tell them a true story about myself as a child (involving a couple toads and the gas tank of a lawnmower) and then did a few stories from around the world.

Books:

Everywhere the Cow Says "Moo!" by Ellen Slusky Weinstein

A fun book that I've done before where we learn what cats, dogs, frogs, and other animals say in Spanish, French, and Japanese. After each animal, I let the kids repeat the animal noise, and we all join in on "And everywhere, the cow says Moo!" 

  

Similar, but not quite as fun are the books Yum! Yuck! A Foldout Book of People Sounds and Mung-Mung: A foldout Book of Animal Sounds both by Linda Sue Park. It's interesting how the same concept of different sounds in each language can be such a hit or miss. The kids I read these books to didn't seem to "get" the sounds were in different languages, and they were presented on the page in such a way that it didn't lend itself to the "kid chorus" like the Weinstein book. 

I also wanted to do a little storytelling, so in addition to my own story, I read a few selections from Three Minute Tales: Stories from around the World To Tell When the Time is Short by  Margaret Read MacDonald. We didn't have this at our library, so I got it through ILL (I just love that service). There are great stories in here for all ages, all of them perfect for those with short-attention spans like my toddlers & preschoolers, or more thoughtful tales that just happen to be shorter. I need to get a copy of this book for myself.

Craft:

We told stories during craft time - I let the kids write down or tell me stories for our book if they wanted to do it. Otherwise, I put down paper on the tables and let them draw whatever they wanted to. Always nice to have an very open-ended activity once in a while.

 

This theme was used the week of May 30, 2011.

Next week we'll start our world tour for summer reading, starting with Norway.

Airplanes

I like doing storytimes on vehicles because there are so many little boys and girls that just love anything that moves. So I decided on airplanes this week. I started by lining up chairs in rows in our storytime area and we all pretended to take a flight (to Florida, of course. Where else would we go from snowy Minnesota?)



Books:

That's Not My Plane by Fiona Watt
I love the "That's Not My..." series. Even older kids and adults like being able to interact with the books by feeling the scratchy propeller, the shiny headlights, the rough seat. And of course I always let the kids feel the pages as I'm reading it. This slows me down, so this time I was smart and had two copies of the same book - one in each hand, letting twice as many kids touch at the same time.



Redbird by Patrick Fort
Redbird was a neat book I found that is in both braille and printed text and it has raised bumps under the elements of each picture as well. The story, frankly, is not good and not much of a story. But I read it anyway to the kids the opportunity to touch the bumps on the book and imagine what reading would be like for those who cannot see.

Other books I read this week were:
Airplanes!: Soaring! Diving! Turning! by Patricia Hubbell

Amazing Airplanes by Tony Mitton
I Love Planes! by Philemon Sturges

Activity:

We got to do something we've been doing a lot at my house lately: make paper airplanes! I gave the kids markers and crayons and instructed them to decorate both sides of a blank piece of paper. Then I folded it into a basic plane (my standby is the dart) and had a space set aside for them to fly their creations. For instructions on how to fold the dart, and other great airplane designs, try the site www.amazingpaperairplanes.com.



This theme was used the week of 12/6/10.
Next week we'll be talking about pancakes.

Big, Bigger, Biggest

I don't know about you, but my own kids have had trouble with size comparisons. Or at least they did early on. They've got it down by now. Seems easy: "A is bigger than B, therefore B is smaller than A". "This jacket is too big for me, but too small for mama." But inevitably they'd say the jacket was too small for me and too big for them, or get it mixed up somehow. So I decided to do a storytime on that. I brought a number of items from my house, each in 3 sizes. I brought spoons (teaspoon, soup spoon, serving spoon), whisks (small, medium, large), jeans (infant, child, and daddy's), and a few other things. The pants were the biggest hit, of course. But for each we figure out which was the biggest, which the smallest, and which in the middle.


Books:

I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean by Kevin Sherry
The story of a giant squid (not an octopus, a squid) that goes around stating how he's bigger than this fish, he's bigger than that jellyfish, and then of course an enormous whale swallows him. But then he finds he's the biggest thing inside the whale... It's a good book and funny for the kids, I just wish they wouldn't just use "I'm bigger than..." all the time. An occasional "This ____ is smaller than me" would have been nice, since that's what I was working on with the kids this week.

Big, Bigger, Biggest by Nancy Coffelt
I read this book two different ways depending on the age of the kids. For the older ones, I read it how it was written - there are 3 animals in each set and each says a word and 3 synonyms to describe itself (The hippo is big, large, huge, jumbo; the orca is bigger, gigantic, immense, enormous; the dinosaur is biggest, mammoth, humongous, colossal.). For the younger ones, I just read the hippo as "big", the orca as "bigger" and the dinosaur as "biggest". And so on.

What Size? by Debbie MacKinnon
Each page in this book has a number of pictures and a question - "Which is the smallest car?", "What color is the narrowest line?". Nice to see different adjectives - instead of just big and small, they have wide and narrow, tall and short, thick and thin.

I'm the Best by Lucy Cousins
A dog finds that he's the best because he's bigger than Ladybug, swims better than Donkey, faster than Mole, and a better digger than Goose. But then his friends discover that actually, Mole is the best digger, Goose the best swimmer, Donkey is the biggest. But at the end, Dog has fluffy ears, so he's still the best. Good book about comparisons and also about bragging.


Activity:
I couldn't come up with a great craft to go with this, so I put together a worksheet with different sizes of pictures (balls, stars, etc) and had the kids color them, then circle which item in each group was the biggest. Can't do something complex every week.

This theme was used the week of November 30, 2010.
Next week we'll be doing airplanes!

Thanksgiving

This year for the Thanksgiving storytime I decided to focus on the very first Thanksgiving and what it was like "in the olden days". So we talked about how the Pilgrims came here on a boat and they had to cut down trees, build their own houses and raise all their own food. No grocery stores back then. And we learned about how the Native Americans helped the Pilgrims grow more food the next year and they had a big feast at harvest time. I tried to include all this background information at the beginning because most of the books on the first Thanksgiving are written for older kids, with more words and more difficult vocabulary. That doesn't mean I don't use them anyway...


Books:
What is Thanksgiving by Harriet Ziefert

A simple lift-the-flap book where a mouse questions his parents about Thanksgiving. It covers both the first Thanksgiving (very briefly and simply) and the traditions we have now. It's not the best book, but I always like to start with a board book or lift-the-flap to get their attention right away and outline what we're talking about in the simplest terms.

This First Thanksgiving Day by Laura Krauss Melmed
Counting from one to twelve, this book alternates between what the Pilgrims are doing to get ready and what the Natives are doing for the same. An added bonus for a smaller group is that there is a turkey hiding somewhere on each page that the kids had fun looking for.


This Is the Feast by Diane Z. Shore
A longer, poetic book, this describes how the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, established their settlement, were devastated by disease and death, were taught by Squanto how to plant, etc. etc.. I liked all the information in this one, but it was too long for most of my groups, so I clipped a few pages together and shortened the story a bit. It still made an effective telling of the Thanksgiving story and reinforced what we had been talking about.


Activity:

This week we made feather pens. I had been looking for an opportunity to do this craft. It was something that my parents would occasionally make for us and is so simple but fun for kids to play around with. All you need is a larger feather (we used wing and tail feathers from a turkey) and a simple ballpoint or stick pen. Tape is helpful too. Cut the tip off the feather and clean out anything you can from the hollow interior. Take the pen apart, just keeping the part that has the ink and the writing tip in it. Insert the pen into the feather and tape in place. This is a good use for pens that are just about used up since you can trim them better to fit inside the feather. I explained that this was NOT how they used to use feathers to write with in the "olden days" but it was a lot less messy. I had the tables covered with paper so the kids could test out their new quills.


Happy Thanksgiving!
This theme was used the week of November 22, 2010.
Next week we'll be doing superlatives: Big, Bigger Biggest!

ABC's

Alphabet knowledge and phonological awareness is a key concept in learning how to read. I incorporate it into many storytimes, but it's always nice to do a storytime just completely focused on the ABC's. There are thousands of alphabet books out there, but many of them are oddly geared toward older children and have a whole paragraph (or page!) of text about whatever they choose each letter to stand for. But for preschoolers, here's my top favorites for ABC's.

Books:
Creature ABC by Andrew Zuckerman

 I just discovered Creature ABC this summer and absolutely loved it. It has the upper and lowercase letters on one page, then a fantastic photograph of the animal (or concept) that it stands for. Simple. And some of the animals are not what you'd expect (N is for Nocturnal, for example). But still short and easy enough for the youngest to understand. And I really appreciate that it includes the lowercase letters as well.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr.
A classic, and one that many of the kids recognized and even had memorized. It doesn't spend too much time on each letter, but you do get to see all the letters - again both upper and lower case.

Old Black Fly by Jim Aylesworth
The ABC's here are not too obvious unless you point them out to the kids. The fly buzzes around people and objects starting with A and all the way to Z (where the fly gets squashed)!

Other books:
Didn't use these, but here are some other good ABC books:
Stuff on My Cat Presents: Cats A to Z 
This is a cute board book with photos of a cat with various objects (H is for Hat, etc.)
My Little Minnesota ABC  
Another board book, with Minnesota interests and landmarks, but I think it would require more one-on-one explanation than I have time for in storytime.

Activity:
Ok, good idea, poor execution here. I found out you can adhere foamies (in this case, foam letters) to jar lids and have instant cheap rubber stamps. Yay - enough stamps for all the kids! Unfortunately, I didn't have enough stamp pads for all the kids, so we used washable tempera paint. And this just ended up messy. With the proper stamp pads, though, this might be really cool. Maybe save this for next time we have an increase in our budget (feel free to laugh here).


This theme was used the week of November 19, 2010.
Next week we'll be talking about Thanksgiving!

Veteran's Day

To honor those who have served our country, I decided to do a Veteran's Day theme this week. It's a difficult subject for a bunch of preschoolers, and there are few very easy books out there, but when has that ever stopped me?





Books:
 Veteran's Day by Jaqueline Cotton and Veteran's Day by Leslie Kaplan
Both of these are good non-fiction overviews of what Veteran's Day is. We talked about "people in the army" and saying "thank you" to them.

F is for Flag by Wendy Cheyette Lewison
Ok, so this is technically a Flag Day book, but it's about our country and the flag, and works well for the younger kids, so I used this. To keep their interest, we counted the number of flags on each page.


America Is... by Louise Borden
I like this book that describes all the things that "America is". Different people, different states, different ways of life, but the same country, the same flag, etc. However, it's more of a Kindergarten and up book, since it gets a bit wordy. So I looked it over ahead of time and paper-clipped certain pages together to make a much shorter book. Hey, there's no rule that you have to read the WHOLE book. One kid did catch me skipping pages, but was ok when I explained that it was a bit longer than we could do in our time.

Other possible books:
I considered these, but they didn't ultimately work for my crowd.
Night Catch by Brenda Ehrmantraut
A soldier being deployed on the other side of the world explains how he'll play "catch" with his son at home using the North Star. 
America: A Patriotic Primer by Lynne Cheney
An ABC book with a lot of extra information, and words that are just too complex for my kids.  

Activity:
I created a coloring page with poppies for them to color and typed out the poem "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae, which is as follows:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
      Between the crosses, row on row,
   That mark our place; and in the sky
   The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
   Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
         In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
   The torch; be yours to hold it high.
   If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
         In Flanders fields.

This theme was used the week of November 8, 2010.

Next week we're doing ABC's.

Cookies

We read about cookies this week at storytime, then got a little messy and made some ourselves!

Good cookie books:

If you Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff

I have a puppet with accessories that goes with "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" so if I don't have too many kids, I will give them each something (cookie, straw, napkin, broom, etc). and the mouse puppet will grab it from them when it comes to that time in the book. 

 The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson

 The kids also liked "The Cow Loves Cookies" and joined in the refrain every time I read it, though I don't think all of them "got" the fact that the cow loved cookies because she had milk...

May I Please Have a Cookie by Jennifer Morris 

 "May I Please Have a Cookie" is a short reader book emphasizing manners, which we tied in at the end when we sat down to make our cookies. 

Ginger Bear by Mini Grey

"Ginger Bear" was one of the favorite books this week about a gingerbread bear making his own friends (only to have them be eaten by a dog), then finding a place where a cookie could be safe.

Cookies: Bite-size Life Lessons by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
 "Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons" is a cute vocabulary book, but I only used it for the older kids that were able to sit a little bit longer. This is a book that would be best as a one-on-one book and would grow on a child with repeated readings.

Activity:

This week we made cookies at the library! Now, we have a very small library and our "kitchen" consists of a teeny-tiny dorm fridge with a microwave stacked on top. But I found a recipe where you can bake sugar cookies in the microwave (and posted it here). So I brought my mixer, rolling pin, and cookie cutters from home, and for each group of storytime kids, we measured and mixed, then wrapped the dough up to cool and harden. But in our fridge, it only took a few seconds for the dough to be firm enough to use (or maybe there was some in the fridge previously and I traded, but don't tell the kids that). Each kid got their own slice of dough to pat down and use the cookie cutters on. Then I put the finished shapes on some parchment paper and voila! 1 minute later we had some piping hot, cooked through sugar cookies!

Next week we're talking about Veteran's Day!

This theme was used the week of November 1, 2010.

Halloween

Halloween is always fun. I dress up (nothing too scary) and always encourage the kids to come in costume as well. This year I did a monster theme and dressed up as a generic monster (just because I had the horns and a large shirt already at home).

Actions:
I made a glove puppet with a monster for each finger and did a fingerplay of "5 Scary Monsters" that I found on thebestkidsbooksite.com
Five scary monsters howling out a roar,
One ran away, and then there were four.
Four scary monsters hiding in a tree,
One fell out, and then there were three.
Three scary monsters eating spider stew,
One got sick, and then there were two.
Two scary monsters having lots of fun,
One ran off, and then there was one.
One scary monster, afraid to be a hero,
He ran away, and then there were zero. 

Books:

 
 Monster Munchies by Laura Numeroff
A counting book showing more and more monsters eating various things. At the end it says "...better close this book up tight before they chew on you!", and I slammed the book shut and sat on it so the monsters didn't get out. The kids all thought that was hilarious and they kept telling me ways to keep the monsters from escaping the book.


My Monster Mama Loves Me So by Laura Leuck
Shows all the ways a monster mama shows she loves her little monster. Kids especially enjoyed the gross parts like swimming in the swamp and drinking lizard juice.

 Jeremy Draws a Monster by Peter McCarty
 Jeremy never leaves his room until a monster that he draws makes increasing demands. Jeremy finally draws a suitcase and a bus ticket for the monster and goes to play with the neighbor kids. This was one of the favorite books this week and the kids giggled at all the requests the monster made (I made sure to read them quickly and in a monster-y voice).


Even Monsters Need Haircuts by Matthew McElligott
 Where do monsters get their hair cut? I read this book to the older kids and they though it was okay - they were mostly interested in recognizing the various monsters (werewolf, medusa, skeleton) than in the actual story. This might be one that would do better with multiple readings where the kids can ask more questions, or as a book to pass the time while waiting for getting their own hair cut.

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak 
I told the kids that was finally going to read the very best monster book in the world and brought out "Where the Wild Things Are". Always a classic, and kids get excited when I read a book that they are familiar with. And who doesn't love Max?

Activity:

Keeping with the "monster" theme, we made monster picture frames for them to put their Halloween photo in. I took a sheet of foam, cut a rectangle shape out of the middle (a little bit smaller than a 4x6 photo would be) and had them glue different sized googly eyes all around the edge. We glued a magnet strip to the top and bottom of the frame. They then would tape a photo behind it, and hang a monster photo on the fridge!



Next week we're making cookies!
This theme was used the week of October 25, 2010.

Snakes

Despite the fact that one of our staff members is deathly afraid of snakes, I went ahead with the theme for this week. I tried to save the realistic looking books for when she was out of sight, though.

Actions:
I brought my son's stuffed animal snake and we talked about different kinds of snakes. I had meant to do "I'm Being Swallowed by a Boa Constrictor", but got distracted as we started talking about rattlesnakes instead. So I ran to the back room, got my basket of maracas and we all sang "If You're a Snake and You Know It" instead. Made sure to put away all the maracas after the song was done as some of the kids were really getting into shaking them and I figured that we wouldn't be able to hear the stories otherwise.

Books:

Snakes Slither and Hiss by Fiona Lock
 This non-fiction reader was the favorite book this week. Talking about different snakes and what they can do, each page ended with a "Hissss" that everyone joined in on.

I Am a Big Snake by Lidia Di Blasi and Nuria Roca
I actually have this book at home. It is a board book, but the text is above the board-book level, and the illustrations are downright creepy, they're so realistic (snake with fangs bared, snake eating eggs). But I love it and had to bring it for storytime.

The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash by Trinka Hakes Noble
Remember this one? A story told backwards, a girl relates the end of her field trip, then what happened before, then a little before that until the whole story comes out. Wonderful illustrations by Steven Kellogg make this a both a good book for reading out loud, and nice one to look at over and over to really appreciate what's going on in each picture.

Activity:
Did two different activities (actually 3) depending on the age of the group. For the youngest, we made snakes out of play dough. Nothing that complicated there, and good tactile stimulation for the little ones. For the older group, I printed out the head and numbers 1-5 of this number snake from DLTK kids and had them color, cut, and glue it together.

Next week we'll be doing Halloween!
This theme was used the week of October 18, 2010.

Fish

Always fun to do a fishing storytime. There are so many good fish books and activities!

Books:

• Trout, Trout, Trout by April Pulley Sayre
• Swimmy by Leo Lionni
• The Pout Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen
• Big Al by Andrew Clements
• Fish Eyes by Lois Ehlert  

The favorite in my household is Trout, Trout, Trout. Wonderful, hilarious illustrations pair with a chant of fish names. It flows so well, both my kids had it memorized very quickly. But it's much better the more you read it and are familiar with it. So the favorite of the storytime kids ended up being The Pout Pout Fish, which lends itself well to over-the-top storytelling with a great frowny face every time you read the "pout pout fish" refrain. 

Activity:  

• Use the song "Goldfish" by Laurie Berkener and have the kids dance and act out the words. Great silly song that the kids will love. 
• Thumbprint goldfish craft. Print out a fishbowl, have kids put their thumbs in orange paint and stamp in the bowl. Add eyes, fins, etc. with marker after the paint dries.
• Rock painting. Have pictures of various sea creatures out, let kids pick out a rock and paint it to resemble a shark, sponge, pufferfish, or other. I made this a faster craft by having the rocks all pre-painted with a solid color, so the kids just had to paint on eyes, fins, and any other details, or glue on googly eyes.

This theme was used the week of June 7, 2010.

Crocodiles

Ok, obviously I'm WAY behind on posting. So I'm going to make some short posts as placeholders until I have time to come in and fill in with more details. I'll be listing a topic, good books to go along with that topic, and a craft, as well as any songs, fingerplays, or other activities I come across.

Crocodile books: 

• Crocodile Beat by Gail Jorgensen
• Crocodaddy by Kim Norman 

Both "Crocodile Beat" and "Crocodaddy" are shorter books with good rhythm and are perfect for toddler/preschool storytimes. If you have kids that can sit still a little bit longer, try:

• Keep Your Mouth Closed Dear by Aliki
• I’d Really Like to Eat a Child by Sylvaine Donnio

Activity: Crocodile with hinged mouth. From our 2010 Summer Reading Program Manual, there was a cutout of a crocodile, a separate lower jaw and a separate tail. Have kids color the pieces, then attach the jaw & tail with brads. 


Theme used week of June 7, 2010.

Mother's Day

I'm busy getting the final things ready for our summer reading program, which starts beginning of June, but have to have our regular storytimes too! This week we talked about Mother's Day.

Book 1: Mother's Mother's Day by Lorna Balian
A story about mothers, and their mothers, and their mother's mothers, this book features a mouse bringing something to her mother for Mother's Day, but mom isn't home - she's bringing something to her mother, who's bringing something to her mother... then in the end, they all end up being chased into the same hole by a cat, so they all spend Mother's Day together.

Book 2: Max and the Dumb Flower Picture by Martha Alexander
Max doesn't want to color the dumb flower picture his teacher gives him. He knows his mom won't like it. So he grabs his crayons and runs away, where he draws a flower of his own. All the kids then draw their own flowers, and the moms are happy that each flower is unique. A nice message, but I think it says "dumb" a few too many times, and I know that's a word some parents object to. Left some of them out and used the book anyway.

Book 3: It's Going to Be Perfect! by Nancy Carlson
A sweet book by a Minnesota author/illustrator, this shows the ideals vs. reality of being a mom. At each age, the mom knows "it's going to be perfect" and baby will sleep through the night, potty train with ease, etc. But reality comes with sleepless nights and "NO!" as a favorite word. Each one is balanced, though with "Boy, am I glad you're here" and all the wonderful lessons this less-than-perfect child has taught her.

Activity: This year, I had the kids draw a picture of their mom and answer some questions about her, like "My mom is ____ years old." "She is the best at ________." It's always fun to see what the kids say about their mothers.

This theme was used the week of May 3-7, 2010. Next week: Kites!