Flannel Friday: Old King Cole

When you spend all day with a baby, you also spend a lot of time with kids' music, books, and toys. One day, while feeding my daughter and listening to Sharon, Lois, and Bram, I heard their version of Old King Cole for the first time. The first verse is the traditional rhyme that most of us know, where the king calls for his three fiddlers.  The second and third verses, however, change the instrument from a fiddle to a clarinet, and then to a trumpet. I have used other similar adaptations of nursery rhymes in story times in the past, and I immediately thought that Old King Cole would make a nice addition to that list. Specifically, I like that it  provides an opportunity to introduce musical vocabulary into story time and to teach kids that there are words for instruments, as well as specific titles for the people who play those instruments.

To mimic what I would do on an actual flannel board, I created just a single slide in Google Drive, where the pipe and bowl and the various instruments fade in and out to show how they would be added to and removed from the flannel board. Below are the presentation, my script for sharing this flannel board with preschoolers, and links for all the clipart I used.

(Click the right arrow to advance the presentation.)

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Sing: 
(Hear the Sharon, Lois, and Bram version of the song here.)
Old King Cole was a merry old soul 
and a merry old soul was he!
He called for his pipe, 
and he called for his bowl,
and he called for his fiddlers three.

Add pipe and bowl to the flannel board as they are named, but do not yet add the fiddles.

Say:
Hmmm... what is a fiddle? A violin! Right! And if we have three fiddlers, how many fiddles do we need? That's right! Three! Help me count them, okay?

Add fiddles to flannel board, counting aloud with the children. 

How would you play a fiddle? Let's pretend to play our fiddles as we sing the second part of the song.

Pretend to play a violin.

Sing: 
Every fiddler had a fine fiddle,
And a very fine fiddle had he;
Oh there's none so rare, as can compare
With King Cole and his fiddlers three.

Repeat full rhyme twice more, substituting fiddles with clarinets and trumpets.

Say:
Now it's your turn. Which instrument would you like to sing about next?

Possible choices are included at the end of the Google Drive presentation - oboe, saxophone, flute, and harp.

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You can download the clipart images I used from the following links:

• King
• Pipe
• Bowl
• Fiddle
• Clarinet
• Trumpet
• Oboe
• Harp
• Saxophone
• Flute

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This week, Flannel Friday is hosted by Kathryn at Fun with Friends at Storytime. For more on Flannel Friday, visit the official website.

At the Children's Desk: A Day of Questions, Volume II

In the weeks before I left my job, my duties away from the reference desk began to dwindle, and I started really focusing my attention on answering questions. There were several days in September and early October where I was on the desk more often than I was not, and on those days, I took notes, keeping track of every question I was asked, and by whom. Today's post focuses on the questions I handled during the last shift of the day on Thursday, September 19. I mostly let the questions speak for themselves because they're more interesting - and funnier - that way, but I have included some notes in brackets where necessary.

3:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

• Senior Citizen Woman: Do you have a post-it note? Do you have Scotch tape? Do you have a pen? Is this book [just sitting on the desk] available?
•  Staff Member: Can you find out how old the person on computer 2 is? 
• Teacher: You were a CYBILS judge, too? Where do you blog? Do you have a graphic novel collection? 
• Same Senior Citizen Woman:  I need to rewrite my note. I guess this is the paper? And this is the tape? Did you hear about that library in Fairfax that threw away all those books? 
• Middle Schooler: I came up with an adjective at school today that seemed really obvious at the time, but now I can't remember what it was. It starts with D, and it means horrible. (And I need it to do my homework.)  [Answer: Dreadful] 
• Same Senior Citizen Woman: What is this library, four or five years old now? 
• Same Middle Schooler: Do you know where Miss [name of coworker] is? Is she going to be on the desk? 
• Child: Can I borrow a pencil? 
• Adult: How do you get to use a computer?

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5:30 p.m. - LIBRARY CLOSES

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To see a full day of questions, check out Day of Questions Volume I.

More Content Coming to Story Time Secrets!

Three years ago, when I first began blogging, I had so much content it was too much for one blog. There were times at the height of my blogging frenzy that I was posting two reviews at Secrets and Sharing Soda and three story time posts here at Story Time Secrets in one day. In the past three years, though, I have gotten married, left my job, and started a family. I no longer perform story times regularly, so I don’t have many of those posts to offer, and though I’m still reading quite a lot, I’m not reviewing nearly as many books as I used to. To make things easier on myself, therefore, I’ve decided to consolidate everything back to just one blog. Because it has more subscribers, and because I prefer its name and layout, I will be moving everything here to Story Time Secrets.


What this will mean for my readers is an increase in content. In addition to story time ideas and posts about library service, you will now also see book reviews for all age levels and my weekly Old School Sunday posts, featuring kids' books published prior to the year 2000.

Thank you so much for your support of my blog over the past three years. I look forward to sharing more great posts with you in the months and years to come!

Flannel Friday: It Fell in the City

Today's Flannel Friday post was inspired by a read-aloud session with my daughter. Since she was born, I've been reading poems to her from Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young. There is a section near the end of the book with a bunch of winter poems, and as I read "It Fell in the City" by Eve Merriam, that old familiar lightbulb went off in my mind, telling me that this would make a great flannel board. 

I discovered that, thanks to Highlights magazine, the text of the poem is available online. Click here to read it, or to listen to the audio version. The basic concept is that snow falls all night, turning each of the familiar objects out on the street from its original color to white. The poem actually never states that what fell in the city was snow, which throws in a nice guessing game component for story time audiences. 

I created a simple Google Drive presentation to demonstrate how I might share this poem as a flannel board. If I were really planning to use it in a story time, I'd probably do my best to make the pieces out of actual felt, as I think it would be much easier - and more logical - to create snow-covered objects using white felt  than it was to recolor everything in Microsoft Paint. I also included a final slide showing just snowflakes. I would ask the kids at the end of the poem to tell me what they think fell in the city, and then after they all hopefully called out, "Snow!" I'd show them the snowflakes to confirm they were correct.

Here is what the presentation looks like:  

This poem would work well for a snow, weather, or winter theme, as well as a city theme, or a poetry theme. It could even be included in an author study of Eve Merriam.

This week's Flannel Friday host is Anna from Future Librarian Superhero. For more on Flannel Friday, visit the official website. Look for more Winter ideas on the Flannel Friday Winter Pinterest board.