Flannel Friday: Hippos in Hats

The highlight of my summer programs this year was my Read-Along Story Time for Beginning Readers. Though this story time had been happening since January, I really feel like I hit my stride with it in July and August, and I especially enjoyed creating literacy games for the kids to play. To my great disappointment, nobody came to the last session of the season, so I wound up with one game that I didn't get to use. It's called Hippos in Hats, and it explores consonant digraphs containing the letter H. (I had planned a letter H-themed story time, which is where the inspiration came from.)

To play, you need two sets of pieces: hippos labeled with words containing the letter combinations sh, th, ch, ph, and wh and hats labeled with those same letter combinations. The object is to match each hippo to the correct hat based on which digraph the word contains. I color-coded the hats to make it a little bit easier to tell the digraphs apart, but the hippos all look the same.

Here is a hippo labeled with the word "when," who gets a "wh" hat.

This hippo's face reads "phone" so he gets a green "ph" hat.

 

This hippo's word is "chat", so she's wearing a red "ch" hat. 

If I were sharing this at story time, I'd have the piles of hats set out where the kids could see them and I'd show the kids one hippo at a time. Depending on the size of the group, I might let the kids choose a hippo from a basket or bag to get them more engaged. If I trusted the pieces not to disappear, I'd also love to set this up as a station for kids to play with on their own outside of a formal story time setting. Though this version of the game is designed for beginning readers up to age 8, it would be easy to simplify for a preschool audience. Instead of matching words to the digraphs they could contain, kids could match words to their first letter, or even uppercase letters to their lowercase counterparts. 

I am this week's Flannel Friday host! You can leave your links here, and they will be included in the final round-up, to be posted no later than Saturday afternoon. For more information on how to participate in Flannel Friday, visit the official website.

Flannel Friday Round-Up, 9/6/13

Welcome to your Flannel Friday Round-Up for September 6, 2013!

First off, I'd like to welcome a Flannel Friday first-timer into the fold! Christine at Felt Board Ideas shares her flannel board adaptation of 10 Little Rubber Ducks by Eric Carle. Thanks for joining the fun, Christine!

If you're planning a story time about apples in the next few weeks, then Lisa, Kathryn, and Kristie have you covered with a variety of fun activities. Lisa at Libraryland shares her version of Way Up High in the Apple Tree, where the pieces stick to a handy glove, and as a bonus, she shows off an adorable apple-themed craft with an accompanying rhyme about a wiggly worm. At Fun with Friends at Story Time, Kathryn presents several apple activities, including an apple-themed version of BINGO, an original rhyme for counting by twos, and an apple tree hand puppet. Inspired by Anna at Future Librarian Superhero, Kristie of Let the Wild Rumpus Start shares her version of Five Apples in a Basket.

Bridget at What is Bridget Reading? is also counting to five, but with those silly monkeys who always tease Mr Alligator.  She also shares a monkey fingerplay she recently found through Perry Public Library. 

At SLC Book Boy, sdbahlmann presents Nick Sharratt's Shark in the Park, which he cut out of cardstock and presented on an overhead projector.

Mollie of What Happens in Story Time... made an adorable flannel set for a rhyme called Pea Soup, which I found a long time ago and then never used.

Tara of Storytime with Miss Tara and Friends introduces us to a puppet version of Crispin, the dragon from Not Your Typical Dragon by Dan Bar-el, and shares the rest of her dragon-themed story time as well. 

As other Flannel Friday participants have done, Lisa from Thrive After Three shows off her story time space this week, and explains how she sets it up for each of her groups.

Cate from Storytiming sings the praises of Sarah Silverman's interactive, video-based app, Uncle Sarah, and shares how she has used it in story time. 

At Piper Loves the Library, Jane shares how she used sheep to cure a meltdown in the doctor's office waiting room and then shows off her flannel sheep, including one who is sheared! 

Lastly, I'm Katie, and my post here at Story Time Secrets is a literacy game designed for beginning reader story time called Hippos in Hats, which explores consonant digraphs containing the letter H.

Next week, Flannel Friday will be hosted by Bridget. Don't forget - you can also follow Flannel Friday on Pinterest and Facebook, as well as at the official website. Have a great weekend! 

Pink & Purple Preschool Story Time, 8/30/13

 

Pink & Purple Preschool Story Time, 8/30/13

I planned a version of this story time back in May and it was a week where no one showed up, so I held onto the books and brought it back out again on Friday. There were only five kids, as this was the first Friday of the school year and the Friday before Labor Day, but it was still a success.

Book: The Pink Refrigerator by Tim Egan
This is such an interesting book about how a magic refrigerator helps Dodsworth discover all the things there are to explore in life. It's a long one, and I wasn't sure how they'd do, but the kids were completely hooked. This would make a great read-aloud for class visits, too - up to second grade or so.

Book: Milo Armadillo by Jan Fearnley
This was a shorter, sweeter story, and the kids were obviously emotionally invested in it, as their little faces changed considerably as the story grew happy, then sad, then happy again. 

Activity: Acting Out Pink and Purple Things
My preschool audiences tend not to respond to music, so I like to have them act things out instead. I made little slips of paper with either a pink or purple squiggle on them, then pulled them out of a brown paper bag one at a time. I had the kids help me name the colors, then we acted out each motion together. I was surprised at how well it went over, as this was a quiet group. The actions I had in the bag are below:

• eat a purple grape popsicle
• climb a purple mountain
• act like a purple monster
• color with a purple crayon
• spread purple jam on bread
• stand like a pink flamingo
• chew pink bubble gum
• oink like a pink pig
• sip pink lemonade
• smell pink roses

Flannel Board Story: Purple Little Bird
I have never seen this book, but Katie's post at Recipes for Reading (linked above) gave me enough to go on to tell my own version of the story. The kids were pretty into it, and willing to name the animals and colors, even though they were otherwise shy.

Book: Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes
This is a long book to read last, and I sort of lost some of the kids, but Henkes is so much fun to read aloud.

Craft: Pink & Purple Coloring Activity
I put out various writing implements in pink and purple and some pink dot stickers and the kids all made different designs with them on plain white paper. One little boy refused to color, possibly because of the color choices, and got into a fight with his nanny, but the other three girls and one boy had a great time.

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.

In the Trees Drop-In Story Time, 8/30/13

 In the Trees Drop-In Story Time, 8/30/13

This story time was fun to set up. I drew four trees on the whiteboard then placed a clipart image on each one to indicate what type of tree it was. I introduced each tree with a song, then read a book to go along with each one.

Song with Ukulele: Here We Go 'Round the Apple Tree
We sang four verses of this song, which goes like this:

Here we go round  the apple tree, the apple tree, the apple tree
Here we go round the apple tree gathering the apples!

We gathered leaves from the maple tree and acorns from the big oak tree.

Book: The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall
I was disappointed by how little they paid attention to books in general, in this session. This book had almost everyone's attention, but it kind of unraveled from there.

Rhyme: Way Up High in the Apple Tree
The kids got really into this, and some of them seemed to remember the words!

Book: The Red Lemon by Bob Staake
I chose this book because it rhymed, and made the conscious decision to cut out a lot of the text on the red page because I thought the group would be antsy. Unfortunately, even the shortened version didn't really seem to grab anyone this morning. 

Rhyme: Lemons in the Bowl
This was a new rhyme and I really liked how it went over. It might have gone on a little long for the babies, but the bigger kids were with me right to the end.

Book: Red Leaf Yellow Leaf  by Lois Ehlert
I am hereby retiring all Lois Ehlert books from story time. I don't like them, and the kids don't seem to "get" her illustrations.

Song: The Trees Are Growing Tall
The kids were great at showing me how tall their trees could grow, and touching their toes when it was time to sing about roots.

Book: The Busy Little Squirrel by Nancy Tafuri
I tried to get the grown-ups to join me on the refrain of this book, and to make all the animal sounds, but they pretty much just tuned me out.

Song: Brown Squirrel, Brown Squirrel
We pretended to be brown squirrels, then gray squirrels.

Song with Puppet: Mr. Sun 

Song with Ukulele: 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.