Moms Club Story Time, 4/28/16

At the April social for my Moms Club, I performed a story time in a church gym for a group of about 12 kids ranging in age from 3 weeks old up to 4 years old. It was probably the biggest turn-out I have ever had for a non-library story time, and it was the only one I've ever done without the ukulele. (I left it home because I had to walk to the story time location in the rain with a double stroller and didn't want an extra thing to carry.) This session was also unique in that almost everything I did was new to my story time repertoire. Here is my full set list.

Opening Song: Story Time is Starting
I have been sick of my traditional "Hello, how are you?" hello song for months. It is especially awkward to use at Moms Club gatherings, because the story time is never at the start of the meeting. So, I wrote a new opening song, which is sung to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It." It goes like this:

Story time is starting, clap your hands
Story time is starting, clap your hands
Story time's begun, 
I hope that you have fun! 
Story time is starting, clap your hands

We did three verses: clapping, stomping, shouting hooray. It was so much better than "Hello, how are you?" 

Book: When Spring Comes by Kevin Henkes

This is the latest book from Kevin Henkes and his wife Laura Dronzek. I don't like it as much as Birds, which is one of my favorite nature picture books, but it was well-suited for establishing the theme of the story time. (I set out to plan an unthemed program, but a Spring theme ended up naturally emerging anyway.) I wouldn't say the kids loved it, but it went over fine, even despite the fact that Little Bo Peep spit up on the floor in the middle of it, prompting Miss Muffet to yell, "Mama! Spit up! Mama!" 

Song: Springtime is Here
I found a version of this song on YouTube, performed by a librarian from King County Library System. Some of her verses either didn't make sense, or had too many syllables, so I changed those, and added some more of my own. The kids were really good at acting out the song, and because they knew the tune, it was easy for them to pick up each verse quickly and sing along. Here are my verses:

The ducks in the pond go quack, quack quack... springtime is here! 
The eggs in the nest go crack, crack, crack... springtime is here! 
The birds in the sky go flap, flap, flap... springtime is here!   
The bunnies in the grass go hop, hop, hop... springtime is here! 
The wind in the air goes whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.... springtime is here! 
The rain coming down goes drip, drip, drip... springtime is here! 
The boots in the mud go stomp, stomp, stomp... springtime is here! 

Rhyme: See, See, See
I have had this rhyme on file for years, but it does not appear that I have ever used it. This audience was especially interested in moving around, so it was a perfect choice, and a perfect segue into a story about three ducks.

Book: Three Ducks Went Wandering by Ron Roy, illustrated by Paul Galdone
This book was long for the littlest kids, and even the bigger kids seemed to fade in and out a bit as I was reading. I probably would not choose this again unless all of the kids in the group were four or five. They were most interested in the snake, but didn't seem to follow the plot all that well. (It was also during this book that Miss Muffet, who normally loves this story, started playing with sound equipment at the back of the room and had to be rescued by another mom.)

Book: Leap, Frog, Leap by Douglas Florian
This is a new board book of which I just received a review copy from Little Bee Books a few days prior to the story time. The size of the book was just a little bit larger than From Head to Toe, and because I knew the kids would be able to see the pictures, I decided to use it as a movement activity. The biggest kids in the group acted it out really well.

Song: Head and Shoulders, Baby
I just recently taught this song to Little Miss Muffet, so I put it into the story time in the hopes of engaging her a little bit. It worked! She did most of the motions, as did a whole line of little girls seated right in the front row. I had planned to do Tony Chestnut, but I think this was the better option.

Book: A Home for a Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown
Though this book is sort of an odd note to end on, the kids were interested in talking about where bunnies might live, and they agreed that places like  bogs, nests, and crowded logs would not be good places for a rabbit. The ending seemed to satisfy them, but I knew they didn't have much of an attention span left, so I started wrapping things up.

Sing-Along Songs: Itsy Bitsy Spider and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Since I didn't have the ukulele, I didn't do my usual ABC medley to signal the end of story time. Instead, we just sang a couple of favorite songs I knew everyone enjoyed. The moms all sang along and did the motions with their kids, which was great.

Rhyme: This is Big, Big, Big
This makes a better ending rhyme for story time than I ever realized. One boy in the audience has been a big fan of this rhyme ever since he first came to story time with me, so even though he's getting older now, I was still glad to be able to share it with him. The other kids also did a nice job with it.

Closing Song: Story Time is Over

Goodbye songs are even more awkward than hello songs because we never end story time and leave immediately. So I changed the words to my opening song a bit to come up with a non-goodbye closing song. It goes like this: 

Story time is over, clap your hands

Story time is over, clap your hands

Story time is done

I hope that you had fun!

Story time is over, clap your hands

This story time really renewed my excitement about performing. I put another story time on the calendar for May, so check back later in the month for another brand-new plan.

Review Round-Up: Books for Beginning Readers, April 2016

I am just finishing up a month of reviewing nothing but picture book biographies, so I haven't reviewed much of anything for beginning readers, but many others have picked up my slack. Here are the easy reader and chapter book reviews I collected from around the blogs during April.

Easy Readers

I didn't find too many easy reader reviews this month, but there are some new and old favorites among the ones I did collect.

Step Up Readers reviewed four easy reader books this month: Dance, Dance Underpants, Splash, Amelia Bedelia By the Yard and Get a Hit, Mo!

Flying Off My Bookshelf had a review of an older title soon to be reissued with new illustrations, The Last Chocolate Cookie. Its sister blog, Jean Little Library, reviewed What am I? Where am I?

Becky's Book Reviews highlighted two classic picture books in easy reader format, Best Friends for Frances and A Bargain for Frances.

Finally, Provo Library Children's Book Reviews had posts about Freckleface Strawberry: Loose Tooth! and Big Cat.

Chapter Books

There was a lot of variety among chapter book reviews this month.

Jean Little Library and Flying Off My Bookshelf had a total of 6 posts about chapter books:

• Bea Garcia: My Life in Pictures
• Lola Levine is Not Mean
• Magical Animal Adoption Agency: The Enchanted Egg
• Digby O'Day and the Great Diamond Robbery
• The Ice Cream Kid: Brain Freeze!
• Rocket and Groot Stranded on Planet Strip Mall

Ms. Yingling Reads reviewed the third Syvlie Scruggs book, The Spelling Bee Scuffle, as well as the new Hardy Boys chapter book, The Video Game Bandit and the first two books in the Dr. Kitty Cat series.

Kids Book a Day also had three reviews: Weekends with Max and His Dad, Noodlehead Nightmares, and Fluffy Strikes Back. Weekends with Max and His Dad was also featured at Librarian's Quest.

Other chapter book reviews from this month included:

• Eva and the New Owl, reviewed by Becky's Book Reviews
• Jasper John Dooley, Public Library Enemy #1, reviewed by Mom Read It 
• A Complicated Case, reviewed by Waking Brain Cells
• The Sword in the Tree, reviewed by Story Time Secrets
• Olive and Beatrix: The Not-So-Itty Bitty Spiders, reviewed by From Tots to Teens

Reading with Little Miss Muffet and Little Bo Peep, April 2016

The Influence of Books

Miss Muffet has always loved books, but lately I am seeing their influence in her daily activities more than ever. For example, earlier this month, she was playing with the sock baby doll I made her for Christmas and we had the following exchange:

Me: Is your baby a boy or a girl?
Miss Muffet: A boy.
Me: What's his name?
Miss Muffet: Maurice Sendak!

The only Sendak book she really knows so far is Alligators All Around, but she also heard my husband and me discussing the illustrations in The Wheel on the School, and apparently his name made quite an impression. And of course, now that she has seen that hearing her call the baby Maurice Sendak amuses me, she does it all the time. She is also quite fond of John Burningham, and attributes every book we read to either him or Bill Martin, Jr.

Another interesting habit she has picked up because of a book is calling me "Pa." This started happening after we read and/or watched the Weston Woods adaptation of Owl Moon every day for a week. I have told her that I prefer to be called "Mama" and that "Pa" would be a better name for her father, but she gets such a kick out of saying, "Hi, Pa!" that I secretly kind of enjoy it. I'm also so, so thrilled that she likes that book. I hesitated about sharing it with her when she is still so young, but she is so fascinated by owls that I'm glad I didn't wait.

Listening to Books and Magazines

Another new introduction to Miss Muffet's life this month has been audiobooks. Now that she has mostly stopped napping, she often needs something to do to make "quiet time" last long enough to be worthwhile, so I decided to give audiobooks a shot. We started with Penny and Her Song, which I downloaded from the library through Overdrive, and then moved on to The Adventures of Johnny Chuck from Librivox. These were okay, but I'm finding that what really works well for her is the audio version of her Highlights High Five magazine. An audio edition of each issue of the magazine is available for download or streaming on the Highlights website, and the recordings all have signals to indicate when page turns occur. I loved "read-along" books like this as a kid, so it's great to see her enjoying the same experience. It also saves me having to read the magazine cover to cover ten times a day, and it has fostered a great love for the magazine's recurring characters, Tex (whom she calls "Tag") and Indi. My husband also raided the audiobook section at the public library this past weekend and checked out a bunch of read-along versions of favorite picture books, so I'm looking forward to seeing her interact with those in the coming weeks.

A Book for Baby

On a recent trip to the used bookstore, Miss Muffet was pulling books off the shelf in typical toddler fashion when she happened upon Jeanne Titherington's Baby's Boat, which is an illustrated version of a lullaby we have been singing to Bo Peep for the past few months. I'm not entirely sure Miss Muffet understood what she had found, but once I told her it was a book version of her sister's favorite song, she was very excited to sing it with her, and we decided to purchase the book.  Though we have many baby-friendly books around the house for Bo Peep to explore, this is the first one we bought for her because of her own interests. We have only read it a few times, but she absolutely loves the baby in the pictures, and Miss Muffet pointed out that the baby even looks a little bit like Bo Peep. I probably would not have chosen this book for either of my children on my own, but I'm so pleased to finally have something in our collection that represents Bo Peep's budding personality.

Bout of Books Read-A-Thon, May 2016

It's time for another Bout of Books!

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, May 9th and runs through Sunday, May 15th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 16 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team
During January's read-a-thon, I managed to read 30 digital ARCs in a week. I read so much that I have only just finished scheduling reviews of some of those titles! During this bout, which runs the week of May 9th, I'm hoping to have similar success. Here are my tentative goals:

• Read three titles for Fumbling Through Fantasy (which takes me through the end of June)
• Read one Old School Sunday title (to fill the next available date, June 12th)
• Read my 1960s and 1970s titles for Newbery Through the Decades. (Total of 2 books)
• Read ARCs for middle grade books coming out in June and July. (Total of 7 books)
• Read ARCs of chapter books coming out in June and July. (Total of 7 books)
• Read all the YA ARCs I currently have. (Total of 4 books)

This is only 24 books, so hopefully I'll get these done and with the time leftover, get started on the rest of the titles I want to blog about this summer. Check back here, and on my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts the week of May 9th to follow my progress.