Imagination Drop-In Story Time, 7/26/13

 

Imagination (Fantasy) Drop-In Story Time, 7/26/13

My manager addressed the group at the start of story time asking them to please be quiet during my presentation. They managed to keep themselves under control for both books, but once I brought out the ukulele, they pretty much lost focus. 

Book: King Bidgood's in the Bathtub by Audrey Wood and Don Wood
This is probably the book I read aloud  the best in my entire repertoire. The kids like the repetition and the illustrations. I love imagining the king's silly, jovial voice.

Flannel Board: Royal Crowns
We sang the usual "The king wore his orange crown all day long" then repeated the song with a slightly different twist as the figures left the board:

The king took off his orange crown, orange crown, orange crown
The king took off his orange crown and went to sleep.

I asked the kids to help me name the colors and to help name the people (king, queen, princess, and prince) as we removed them.

Rhyme: Fierce is the Dragon

Book: The Foggy Foggy Forest by Nick Sharratt
We had a good number of preschoolers at this story time, and they were eager to guess what each shadow represented. One little girl guessed the witch correctly. The ogre doing yoga usually gets a bigger reaction, but this is a tough crowd.

Rhyme: One is a Giant  

Songs with Ukulele: 

• Fairy Dance
  This was the best of the songs we did today. I probably could have played all six verses I came up with several more times, except that I got sick of it after a while.
• Do You Know the Muffin Man?
  For future reference, this group does not know the muffin man.
• Itsy Bitsy Spider
• You Are My Sunshine
• ABCs / Twinkle Twinkle Little Star / Baa Baa Black Sheep

I use the same hello and goodbye songs at almost every session. Click here for the tunes and words. For descriptions of each of my story times, click here.

Imagination Preschool Story Time, 7/25/13

 Imagination Preschool Story Time, 7/25/13

This was one of the all-time best preschool story times.  There about 9 kids, two of whom were older siblings of preschoolers, and one of whom was a rising first grader. We got so into the three books we did read that we didn't read some of the others I had pulled out, but the kids had a blast.

Book: Dream Friends by You Byun
I have been looking forward to sharing this book, and this group was the perfect audience. They loved the illustrations, which is my favorite part of the story, and they thought the dream friend looked like a polar bear or a cat. I was worried the story itself would be too strange for  them, but they got right into it, and clapped loudly at the end.

Flannel Board Story: Jeremy Draws a Monster by Peter McCarty
I am so glad I thought to adapt this to the flannel board. It worked so, so well, and I learned that I am actually really good at telling stories if I practice them right before I perform. I didn't memorize the text word for word, but I made sure to hit the important points, and after story time, we looked at the book and some of the kids were able to tell me the story based on what we had done on the flannel board. I think this is my most successful flannel board of all time.

Book: Pretend You’re A Cat by Jean Marzollo and Jerry Pinkney
I hesitated about this one, but since most of the group was four or five years old, they were eager to act out animal movements, and really good at it as well. I asked them to tell me which animal was on each page, then they moved like that animal while I read the text. When it was time to change animals, I let them know they had to look at the book to find out what to do next which kept them engaged in the fun, but also kept the action from getting too chaotic. 

Book: Not a Box by Antoinette Portis
I was surprised by how much they truly loved this book. They picked up on the "not a box" gimmick right away and kept calling out, "But it's not a box, Miss Katie!" They got a kick out of what the rabbit turned his box into, and they were eager to get on with the business of imagining their own boxes.

Coloring Page: "It's Not a Box!" (page 4 in the HarperCollins Not a Box Event Kit)
This was the perfect activity for this group. They got really into it, and each child who spoke to me was eager to tell me a long narrative explaining the story of his or her rabbit's boxes. It was one of the best coloring activities we have ever done.

I use the same hello and goodbye songs at almost every session. Click here for the tunes and words. For descriptions of each of my story times, click here.