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!

Pre-K Class Visit, 6/16

What an adorable group of kids! We have an elementary school right next door, but because we have been under construction, and they have also been under construction, we haven't quite had the chance to collaborate as we would have liked. But this teacher brought her Pre-K kids over on this, their second to last day of school, to have a little story time. And it was so much fun!

Here is what we did.

Song: Seven Continents on our Globe
Every child wanted to tell me every country everyone in their family had ever visited, but I shortened the conversation a bit by asking them to raise a hand if someone they knew had been to this or that continent. When they started interrupting me to tell me more than one relative, I just asked them to put up two hands. Even their teacher seemed to think that was a wise way to handle it. I patted myself on the back a little bit for that one!

Book: Papa, Do You Love Me? by Barbara Joosse, illustrated by Barbara Lavallee (2005)This one was recycled from this morning's story time. A very astute little boy in the front row got about halfway through this story and then said, "This boy worries about everything!" They all also thought the author's last name was hilarious. 

Song: Rum Sum Sum

Roughly half the class knew this song, so I asked them to sing loud and help their friends. It got the entire group singing along and they really learned the song quickly.

Book: Hunwick's Egg by Mem Fox, illustrated by Pamela Lofts (2005)
I love Mem Fox, and this book was just about perfect for this age group. Hunwick finds an egg, and befriends it, but his friends worry it will never hatch. I asked the kids to guess what kind of animal Hunwick might be (he's a bandicoot), and then to guess at what might be in his egg - and to my surprise, they actually responded! I'm definitely going to recycle this one for a Tales for Fours and Fives session - maybe next week.

Song: Taba Naba by The Wiggles from (It's a Wiggly Wiggly World)
By far, this group had the most success with this song - and the least frustration. I presented it differently this time, practicing the motions ahead of time, and gave a suggestion for which motions to make if they got stuck. It was great fun, and they were so cute, wiggling their little hips!

Tales for Fours and Fives, 6/16

Another day, another learning curve. It occurs to me, now that I've done four story times for this age group (including class visits), that my repertoire for this age is very, very limited. I've worked so hard on learning how to read and sing with babies and toddlers, but I haven't really spent much time with kids over the age of three. And though today's session went very well, and my attendance doubled (3 last week, 7 this week), I find myself uncertain about where to go from here. And I need to figure it out soon, because school's out next week!

One thing I know I'll be using is Anna's delightful secret weapon song, The Watermelon Song, but beyond that, I need pre-K and K suggestions! I'll be digging into my favorite blogs for more ideas later today, but in the meantime, here's what I did this morning:

Opening Song: Hello, how are you?

Song: Seven Continents on our Globe

Book: Earthdance by Joanne Ryder, illustrated by Norman Gorbaty (1999)
Very fitting for the summer reading theme, this book imagines what it would be like to be the Earth, spinning in space, crawling with animals and people, and filled with mystery. The text is highly poetic, with some instances of concrete poetry (icebergs that crack, for example), and the illustrations are very abstract, but the oversized pages and interesting colors drew me right in, and though the kids were very quiet, I think the story spoke to them on some level, too.

Song: Rum Sum Sum


 
Book: Papa, Do You Love Me? by Barbara Joosse, illustrated by Barbara Lavallee (2005)
This is a story set in Africa, and featuring the Masaai culture. A father answers his son's many questions about the depth and breadth of his love. This book introduces a lot of African vocabulary, but also speaks to the universality of a father's love. The boys in this audience especially liked the lion, and the father's promise to scare him off with his shield and spear.


Song: Boots by The Laurie Berkner Band (from Victor Vito)

Book: Perfect Square by Michael Hall (2011)
A perfect square faces adversity in the form of being poked full of holes, shredded, cut into strips, and shattered, but each time it makes the best of the situation by making something new out of its pieces. This book can be extrapolated in a lot of ways, and lends itself to a wonderful craft project (which I didn't do, but any library easily could.)

Song: Taba Naba by The Wiggles from (It's a Wiggly Wiggly World) 

Song: Turn Around by Hap Palmer (from Getting to Know Myself)


Goodbye Song: Skinnamarink

Only two more story times this week - a Pre-K class visit this afternoon, and baby lap time tomorrow. Then I get three days to relax before the next round!