Read-Along Story Time for Beginning Readers, 5/9/13

 Read-Along Story Time for Beginning Readers, 5/9/13

Attendees
This story time attracted two beginning readers, a toddler, a nanny and a mom. The boy beginning reader is almost five and attends school. The girl beginning reader has just turned four, and has never been to school.

Name That Bug 
I put some photos of different interesting insects in a Google Drive presentation, then showed it to the kids on the iPad. Unlike some of the other "Name That" activities we have done, this one wasn't that great for encouraging discussion, especially because there were only two kids in attendance and both were very shy. I don't think I would use this particular set of images again, unless the kids were 6 or 7 and had some real-life experiences with bugs to apply to them.

Read-Aloud 
We read Hey, Little Ant, which is a book I have always liked and never realized my library owned until this week. It was a bit much, philosophically, for the two four year olds who attended this story  time, but they still seemed to enjoy it. Their favorite part was when the ant takes on the large size of the kid. One of the kids, a boy who comes regularly to this  story time, informed me that the ten commandments would keep him from  squishing the ant. That was cute.

Making a List 
We tried to make a list of what we'd bring on a picnic, but only the boy participated. The girl was really too busy to be ready for this kind of story time, and she didn't really participate. 

Bag of Verbs
For this week's bug theme, I rewrote  the verbs on the back of some foam bugs. This activity has never not gone well, but the boy was shy because none of his usual buddies were at story time, and the girl's little sister was in her lap, making it difficult to participate.  So we only did about six movements, and most of  them only I actually did.

Read-Along 
I shared a poem from the April 2013 issue of Ladybug magazine called "Family of Ladybugs", which is by Connie Bowsman. Since neither child could read, I had them repeat each line after me, and that worked very well. I'd do that again, even with my regular group of kids.

Drawing Activity
This week, I used an activity created by Little Miss Kindergarten, which is available from Teachers Pay Teachers. It is an empty bug jar. I asked the kids to draw some bugs and then count them. The little girl had to leave before her picture was finished, but the boy drew a beautiful firefly and I helped him label it with his name, the number 1, and the word firefly.