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!

Poetry & Rhyming

Rhyming is a fairly easy concept for preschoolers to understand. And so many kids' books rhyme, so often when I'm reading a book where the rhyme is obvious, I'll pause to let the kids guess the rhyming word in the story. Not long, just a little bit to allow the kids that are paying attention to shout out the missing word. Alliteration is also simple for kids to grasp - words that start with the same sound. Since April is National Poetry Month, I thought we'd talk a little about rhymes and alliteration for this week's storytime.

Book 1: Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw
Of the thousands of books in rhyme for kids, I wanted to pick a couple whose main emphasis was on rhyming. Sheep in a Jeep is perfect. The story is secondary (though funny) - the point of the book is that most of the words end in "-eep". I though about (though decided against) also doing the board book "Truck Duck" by Michael Rex.

Book 2: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
Classic Dr. Seuss book. Wonderful rhymes, and plenty of alliteration too. What more can I say?

Book 3: Berenstain's B Book by Stan & Jan Berenstain
For our final "poetry" book, we talked about alliteration. The kids already (mostly) knew what it was, they just didn't know the word for it. But we practiced saying "alliteration" a few times, then read the "B Book". Afterwards, we thought of other words that started with B. 




Activity: I was a slacker this week and just made a worksheet for this week's activity. Had pictures on one side of a hat, bear, etc. and had cat, hair, etc. on the other side. They were to connect the two pictures that rhymed.
Theme used week of April 26th, 2010. Next week: Mother's Day!

Rainbows

We talked about colors this week, and I started off by having everyone name their favorite color.  The library had purchased a couple of very neat books about color that I was so excited to read to the kids, and this was my opportunity.

Book 1: See the Colors by Dawn Babb Prochovnic
This book has a nice, calm phrasing that repeats the name of different colors on each page. "See the blue, see the blue, see the blue, little one. Chase the blue jays from our garden, see the blue, little one." What's neat is that it shows the word in sign language on each page (with more detailed instructions on how to do them in back). I signed and also had the kids signing the different colors on each page. At the end, I had a little "quiz" and it's amazing how many kids retained most or all of the signs by the end.

Book 2: The Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin and Rosana Faria
Most of the kids had some knowledge of sign language and how deaf people used it to communicate. But then I brought out The Black Book of Colors and we talked about how blind people experience the world. This book is so neat - all of us here at the library have been recommending it to people that come in. It's all black with white text, about a boy who can't see, but tells us what colors feel, taste, or smell like. Braille text is printed below the English text, and raised pictures (also in black) encourages kids to touch the pages and feel the green grass, the yellow feathers, or the black hair. I requested a couple other copies through ILL and left them with the daycare groups that I read with so that the kids could take turns reading and feeling the pages. I also showed them a thank you note we had received here at the library, written in braille, by a local girl who is blind and was introduced to this book through our recommendation.

Activity: Rainbow handprints
We ended with each child tracing their hand on various colors of construction paper. I let the older kids cut out their own, but helped those that we couldn't really trust with scissors yet. They drew their names on the handprint and I hung all of them in ROY G BIV order to form a rainbow in our front window. I like to show people that don't come during storytime some of the neat things we do here with the kids!

This theme was used the week of April 9, 2010.
Next week we're working with math and patterns.

Easter bunnies

In some ways holidays are easy weeks to plan because you don't have to come up with a theme for that week; it's expected that you'll read Christmas books at Christmas, Easter books at Easter, etc. But on the other hand, there are only so many good holiday books out there. There's dozens of holiday books published each year, but I'm not going to read just anything at my storytime... there, doesn't that sound snooty enough? But truly, so many of these books are disposable, meant to be purchased by parents just because it has "Valentine's Day" or "Halloween" on the cover, and with no regard to the quality of the writing on the inside. Ok, enough ranting. I knew this was going to be a fun storytime as one of my moms had agreed to bring her bunny for all the kids to see and pet. But we started off with a few decent holiday books...

Book 1: My First Easter by Tomie dePaola
A short board book illustrating some of the things that happen around Easter. Nice that it includes both the religious and the secular: there's an egg hunt and new clothes for church on Sunday. I do just love dePaola's illustrations. He makes everything so clean and simple, and yet there's always something more to find in all of his pages.

Book 2: Owen's Marshmallow Chick by Kevin Henkes
Another great board book by a wonderful author/illustrator. Owen gets a number of different candies in his basket, each one named his "favorite" before he eats them up. Then he comes to the marshmallow chick, the same color as his blanket. Instead of eating it, he plays with it all day and calls it his "favorite" before he puts it on his shelf with his toys. Very cute and you can just see the excitement in Owen's eyes as he picks up each item in his basket.

Book 3: The Story of the Easter Bunny by Katherine Tegen
Before I brought out our "surprise guest", I read this story about the supposed origins of the Easter Bunny as a pet white rabbit in the home of an old couple who dye eggs, weave baskets, and deliver them all to the village children on Easter. Then one year the old couple are still asnooze when there is work to be done, so the bunny finishes their tasks and delivers the baskets. Little by little the bunny takes over, then moves to his own place with his own troop of bunny helpers to get all the baskets made and delivered each year.

Book 4: An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Aston
Actually this would be book 2.5, as I read it between "Owen's Marshmallow Chick" and "The Story of the Easter Bunny", but only for the daycare groups where I didn't have the live bunny coming. A beautifully illustrated book, it shows the wonderful variety of eggs: bird eggs, insect eggs, fish eggs, and more. A peaceful book that still manages to engage and astonish kids of all ages.

Experiment: Vacuum/Egg experiment
I had video taken of this as well, but my helper had the camera turned the wrong way, so until I get that figured out, the still photo will have to do.  I've always wanted to try this experiment, but didn't think of doing it here until a coworker suggested it. You light a small piece of paper, drop it in a flask, then immediately put a hard-boiled egg on top. The vacuum created by the fire sucks the egg down into the flask with a satisfying pop! And, if you have a neck that is just a little bit too small (like I did), then it also tears the egg in half.  Naturally there was a little talk about fire safety beforehand, but the kids just loved it. Hooray for science!

Theme used week of March 29, 2010.
Next week, we're talking about rainbows.

Spring has sprung!

The spring equinox this year actually coincided with the warming of our cold weather here in Minnesota, and much melting of snow. That's not always the case, so this year we reveled in the diminishing white drifts and enjoyed feeling the warmth of the sun again. For this week, I had originally decided to start with the book "Spring Things" by Bob Raczka, but that made too many books that had too little text, so I left it out in favor of "The Tiny Seed".

Book 1: Cold Little Duck, Duck, Duck by Lisa Westberg Peters
This is a perfect book for the transition from winter to spring. Especially for us in Minnesota where it can change within a day (and then change back to winter, and then to spring, winter, and then spring again). A little duck flies north too early and lands on a frozen lake. But never fear, his warm thoughts cause the weather to warm up and spring arrives! Few words on each page, and there's an echo of three words (duck, duck, duck; cold, cold, cold; etc) on each page that I thought might be distracting, but the kids really enjoyed that extra touch.

Book 2: Mud by Mary Lyn Ray
Another book with minimal text on each page, describing the mud that results from the melting of winter into spring. The wonderful illustrations show a boy reveling in the mud - starting off in shoes, then disposing of them and enjoying the squishyness with his bare feet.  Before I read this book, I asked the kids what kind of boots they wore to go out in the mud with and told them to keep an eye out for what color boots this boy was wearing. A few of them got the joke at the end - he wasn't wearing any boots!

Book 3: The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
Classic book about growing from a tiny seed into a flower. Of the group of seeds that begin the book, none of them survive except the tiniest seed, which grows to a flower.  Not just any flower, of course, but "the biggest flower anyone had ever seen". And the seeds come out of that flower and the cycle begins again. I used this book to talk about what seeds need in order to grow: sun, water, and dirt. We saw how some of the seeds didn't get all three of these, so they didn't grow. This provided a good transition to the activity we were doing. You would think someone planned this out!

Activity: Planting seeds
I gave each of the children a small dixie cup that they decorated on the outside. Then we filled them with damp potting soil. Then everyone got to plant either a bean or a pea. I figured those were the largest seeds with the shortest germinating time that I could think of. Plus I had some left over from my own garden last year. Yay for cheap activities! So we had the "dirt" need covered, and I did get out a plant mister and water each of their cups to fulfill the "water" need before they set their pots on the windowsill for the "sun". With the open storytimes, I had the kids take the pots home with them, but I had the daycares leave theirs here, and by the next week we had little tops peeking out, and then in two weeks, we had bean plants nearly half a foot tall! I sent the plants home at that point. A little reluctantly, since it's been fun watching this greenness growing on the desk next to me, but they're getting too big for their cups and need to be set free.
 Theme used week of March 22, 2010.

Next week: Easter is coming, with a real bunny!