Camp Story Time, Ages 4-11, 7/2/12

We don't have as many camps this summer as last, but we do have a few, and this one asked me to do a story time for their group, which ranges in age from 4 to 11. Last summer, this sort of request sent me into a panic - this year, thanks to all the time I spent visiting schools, I was more than ready to meet the challenge. I overplanned, which is normal for me, because I always worry about running short, but I wound up filling 25 minutes with just two books and one song.

Here's the rundown:

Book: Stella Louella's Runaway Book by Lisa Campbell Ernst (1998)
As I did during my second grade class visit for National Library Week, I introduced this book by telling the kids to look for the clues and figure out which book it was that Stella has lost. They all did a great job of not telling the answer until the very end, and even the littlest ones had figured it out by the time I asked them to call out the name of the story.

Book: The Little Old LadyWho Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams, illustrated by Megan Lloyd (1986)
I have read this book many times, usually to preschoolers, but I knew I needed something more to make it appeal to this wide age range. So, I made the story interactive by having the kids act out each motion. The movements we used are as follows:

CLOMP CLOMP = Stomp your feet
WIGGLE WIGGLE = Do a twist motion with your hips
SHAKE SHAKE = Shake your hands
CLAP CLAP = Clap your hands
NOD NOD = Nod your head
BOO BOO = Open and close hands next to face

The kids got really into this, and they clapped and cheered when we finished. The camp counselors also did an awesome job of joining in and encouraging the kids to participate. I will never read this book sitting down again. (And I also learned that it never hurts to raid the holiday books for stories - this is shelved with our Halloween books, but it's really something that could be read any time, and especially with our nighttime theme this year!)

Dance: Taba Naba (A video I found on YouTube that shows the song and motions is here. The lyrics and origin of the song are on Wikipedia.)
Last summer, I introduced this song is as part of the One World, Many Stories summer reading theme, and used it with the Wiggles recording from their Wiggly Wiggly World album (pictured above). During the past year, I have learned the words and can now sing the entire thing without the music. The advantage of this is that I can now introduce the words and movements separately first, and then sing the song as slowly or as quickly as I would like. I also wrote the words on our dry-erase wall so the older kids could attempt to sound them out with me. I had them read through the words with me, practice the motions a couple of times, and then we put it all together. The kids caught on really fast, and we had a great time doing our sit-down dance.

At the end of story time, the kids signed up for summer reading, while I quickly dashed upstairs to set up for the school-age program, our Daytime Pajama Party, which the camp also attended. Stay tuned for the post about that, coming up next!