Baby Lap Time, 6/17

Days like today are what story time is all about. What a fun time we had this morning! At least 35 kids showed up, most of which were in the target age group, and their wonderful nannies, moms, and grandparents participated in every song and rhyme, singing louder than I've ever heard them sing before!

This is what we did:


Opening Song: Hello, how are you?
I normally don't use this hello song for the babies, but one of the adults told me her niece was looking forward to it, so I decided not to disappoint her. I'm actually thinking I might start using it for babies again, because everyone really seems to like it, and it's what they're familiar with from my other story times.

Song: Clap Along With Me

Rhyme: This is Big, Big, Big

Rhyme: Dance Your Fingers

Book: The Very Best Daddy of All by Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by Leslie Wu (2004)
I'm really torn about whether to read books to this group at all. What I would like to read are more board books, with simple images, text, and concepts, but those books are really small, and we don't have enough copies - not even system-wide, in most cases - to give every family their own individual book to read. So I've been sticking to simplistic picture books, and hoping for the best. This book's beautiful illustrations depict different animals and the ways their fathers take care of them. At the end, the narrator - who is presumably a child - proclaims that his own father is the best of all! A good one for Father's Day.

Flannel Board Song: Daddy's Ties

Flannel Board Song: How Much is that Doggie in the Window?

Song: I'm a Little Teapot

Song: Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes (from Wee Sing for Baby)

Book: Penguins, Penguins Everywhere! by Bob Barner (2007)
I found this book in the non-fiction section, and meant to use it for Tuesday morning's story times next week. I threw it in here at the last minute, though, mostly because I was worried about not filling 20 minutes. I like the rhyming text - and it fits well with the summer reading, in that it talks about penguins in lots of climates. But my audience was really only interested in songs, and I didn't have their attention at all for this book. 

Song: ABCD Medley

Song: Chickadee

Song: Where is Thumbkin?

Goodbye Song: We Wave Goodbye Like This

Flannel Friday: Sorting Activity - Around the Neighborhood

Well, better late than never! My Flannel Friday this week is a work in progress. I'm experimenting with new ideas for my fours and fives group, which I expect to grow a bit now that school is officially out. What I'm planning is a sorting activity, where the kids help me sort objects according to where in the neighborhood they would most likely be found.

The four neighborhood locations I'm working with are (hopefully) obviously different from one another, with few objects that would overlap. For this first try, I'm using the hair salon, the bakery, the post office, and the library. The images I'm using came from kizclub.com, but I used print screen to get just those four into their own document, which is here.

The objects I came up with all resulted from Google image searches. Here's what I have, sorted the "correct" way.

Hair Salon: scissors, blowdryer, comb, mirror
Post Office: letter, mailbox, package, stamp
Library: books, library card, group reading a story
Baker: flour, bread, baker's hat, mixer

The pdf containing all the objects is here.

I probably won't end up using this for another week or so, because I've already got things planned for next week's session, but I'll report back when I see how it holds up.

Our Flannel Friday host for this week is Mel's Desk - don't miss the  rest of the round-up!