Fizz, Boom, Read! Preschool Story Time Starter: Living or Non-living?

Today, I'm continuing my series of preschool story time starters inspired by the Fizz, Boom, Read! summer reading theme. (If you missed it, I began two weeks ago with the five senses, and last week I posted about temperature.) Today's theme is "Living or Non-Living?". Though some of the resources below specifically address the differences between things that are and are not alive, this theme can also be expanded to include topics like growing, planting, gardening, animals, and trees.
 

 Miss Katie's Recommended Books

• What’s Alive? by Kathleen Zoehfeld, illustrated by Nadine Bernard Westcott
  Introduce the theme of story time with this beginning science book. Either read the entire book straight through, or pick and choose segments that you think will be easiest for your audience to understand.
• Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow? by Susan Shea, illustrated by Tom Slaughter
  This lift-the-flap book is a great guessing game that reinforces the concept of being alive with a series of questions about whether objects can or cannot grow. Kids as old as six and seven get really into this, but even the little ones will enjoy trying to figure out whether cars grow to become trucks or shirts grow to become sweaters.
• Are You Living? by Laura Purdie Salas, illustrated by Viviana Garofoli
  This is a singable non-fiction picture book by an excellent CYBILS award winning children's poet, all about the differences between living and non-living things. Sidebars provide additional information that can be shared as appropriate.

Other Possible Books

• Actual Size by Steve Jenkins
• Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse by Leo Lionni
• Chopsticks by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
• Crinkleroot's 25 Mammals Every Child Should Know by Jim Arnosky
• Duck and Goose by Tad Hills
• The Growing Story by Ruth Krauss
• Hunwick's Egg by Mem Fox
• I Can't Said the Ant by Polly Cameron
• Mary Had a Little Lamp by Jack Lechner
• Prudence Wants a Pet by Cathleen Daly
• Shark vs. Train by Chris Barton

Songs & Rhymes

• Song: Everything Grows by Raffi
  This song would be fun to sing with musical accompaniment (guitar, ukulele, piano, etc.) and/or with the kids holding up pictures to represent each growing thing represented in the lyrics. This would also be a good one to play as background music while the kids color or work on a craft. 
• Rhyme: Five Eggs and Five Eggs
  This fingerplay is also fun to do with puppets if you have an egg and a hen.
• Song: Mr. Sun
  After discussing how the sun helps living things grow, sing this song with a puppet, or holding up your arms in a sunshine shape.
• Song: One Seed by the Laurie Berkner Band
  Watch this video for the hand motions for Laurie Berkner's song about the importance of planting trees and passing down responsibility for our Earth to future generations.

Games

• Flannel Board Sorting Game: Is this alive or not alive?
  Provide children with a series of objects and ask them to decide whether they are alive or not. Hopefully, if you have a lot of flannel board pieces already made, you'll be able to choose from what you have without having to make anything new. Otherwise, kizclub.com has a lot of great clipart of all different objects that can be printed out, laminated, and used as is, and or used as templates for actual flannel pieces. There is also a set of Living and Nonliving Picture Cards available here. Librarians who are looking to introduce more technology at story time might also try sharing this game from Thinkcans.net. 
• Act out the Animals
  Provide puppets, flannel board pieces, or just simple pieces of paper printed with the names/images of animals and have the kids act them out. You could also ask them to act out other living things, such as flowers or plants, though they might have a limited range of movements. A good book to inspire animal movements is Pretend You're a Cat by Jean Marzollo.

Visit These Sites for More Ideas

• Living & Nonliving from Adventures of a K/1 Teacher
• Living and Non-Living: A Science Mini Unit by April Larremore 
• Teaching Living or Nonliving from Lerner Books

LibraryAdventure.com: Quick and Easy Displays for Your Library's Children's Room

Today, I'm sharing my favorite ideas for quick and easy library displays that can be pulled together in 30 minutes or less. See them all at The Library Adventure.

10 Flannel Friday Favorites

This week, Flannel Friday celebrates its three-year anniversary! Accordingly, I would like to share my ten Flannel Friday favorites.

These first six items on my list are flannel boards and props I learned about from Flannel Friday and actually used in story times - in some cases, nearly every week.

• Down Around the Corner from Mel's Desk
  Mel's post inspired me to create Down Around the Corner at the Hardware Store for my week of construction-themed story times last year. I have also done Down Around the Corner at the Children's Bookstore and Down Around the Corner by the Big Oak Tree. 
• Blue is the Sky from Mel's Desk
  I have never used this rhyme as a flannel board, but the action rhyme version Mel shared in her post became a staple of my story times - and inspired me to write two versions of my own: Fierce is the Dragon and Frozen is the Lake. 
• The Case of the Missing Shoe from Read It Again
  Finding this story on Sarah's blog was a lifesaver during my last few weeks at the library. I'd been wanting to do a shoe theme forever, but had trouble finding quality materials. I wound up telling the story on a clothesline and it was a big hit!
• Did You Ever See a Turkey? from Read It Again
  Sarah also inspired my favorite holiday story time prop of all time - the turkey stick puppet with the wacky feathers. 
• Purple Little Bird from Recipes for Reading
  There are not enough purple stories in the world, and my library didn't even own this one, but thanks to Katie, I was able to get the gist of the story and tell my own version.
• The Magic Envelope from Rain Makes Applesauce
  Sharon made it possible for me to delight my story time audiences with a brand-new trick just when things were getting a bit stale last summer. I shared 9 magic envelopes between May and August, and I'll never forget the mom who told me that her twins played story time at home and used junk mail as their magic envelope. This is a true story time gem.

These last four links are Flannel Friday contributions I have always admired and someday hope to use.

• Are You a Horse? from Thrive After Three
  I love so many of Lisa's videos, but this is one I return to again and again. I love her casual way of incorporating the puppets, and her storytelling style. If I had the budget, I'd buy a set of animal puppets just so I could tell this particular story.
• The Ants Go Marching from In the Children's Room
  Lucy's approach to singing this song with the flannel board is so perfect. Instead of lining up ten individual ants on the board, she created pieces with multiple ants on them. I am more of a clip art kind of gal, but if I were to make something out of felt, this would be at the top of my list.
• Roll a Storytime! from So Tomorrow
  Anne's idea for using giant dice to roll a song or movement activity is something I always meant to try before leaving the library to have my daughter and I never did. I'm seriously considering making a pair of these for home when my daughter is a little older! 
• Fall is Not Easy from Storytiming
  This is one flannel board I wish I had the artistic ability to make. There have been many Flannel Friday adaptations, but Cate's was the first, and she was the one who introduced me to the book, and to its highly flannelizable qualities. Again, if I were to start making pieces from felt, this is one of the felt sets I'd want to make.

For more on how I feel about Flannel Friday, check out last year's birthday post, What Flannel Friday Means to Me. Also don't miss the round-up for this week, hosted by Anne at So Tomorrow. For more on Flannel Friday, check out the official website, Facebook page, and Pinterest account. 

5 Reasons Why I Love Mrs. Wishy-Washy (Joy Cowley Classroom Giveaway 2014)

One of my most vivid memories from kindergarten is reading Mrs. Wishy-Washy aloud in a chorus with my teacher and classmates. I delighted in calling out, "Along came Mrs. Wishy-Washy," and to this day there is just something thoroughly satisfying about the phrase, "Oh, lovely mud!" Today, I am promoting Hameray Publishing's Wishy-Washy 2014 Contest, and I want to share the reasons I loved Mrs. Wishy-Washy at age five, and still love her to this day. 

1. Mrs. Wishy-Washy has the perfect name. It's doubly alliterative, fun to say, and it tells the reader exactly what the character is interested in and concerned about.


2. Mrs. Wishy-Washy is a lovable grump. Though she is strict with the animals and often stands disapprovingly with her hands on her hips, there is also a hint of affection in her tone of voice and her demeanor. Kids can relate to both her desire to keep the animals clean and to their need to defy her in order to play in the mud. I also think her pink slippers go a long way toward softening her supposedly stern persona.


3. The Mrs. Wishy-Washy books build upon familiar concepts in a fun way. Kids feel comfortable in Mrs. Wishy-Washy's world because they have already learned about farm animals as toddlers. They don't feel like babies, however, because these stories use those animals in a more sophisticated way that suits the five-year-old sense of humor. The moment at the end of the original Mrs. Wishy-Washy where the animals all jump back into the mud the exact kind of thing that gives kindergartners the giggles because they don't see it coming.


4. Mrs. Wishy-Washy and its many sequels provide many possibilities for classroom and library use. Mrs. Wishy-Washy can easily support common classroom and story time themes such as bathing, farm animals, mud, and the letter W. This is especially wonderful because kids who have grown attached to the character can stick with her even as they continue to learn new things.


5. Lastly, I like the original Mrs. Wishy-Washy because it is endlessly adaptable. In story time, I can just read the story straight through, or I can tell it from memory using puppets or flannel board pieces. Kids can also easily tell and retell the story themselves, which helps build their narrative skills. There are also tons of crafts, writing activities, displays, bulletin boards and other creative ideas all over the internet that extend the reading experience beyond the story.

In celebration of Mrs. Wishy-Washy, Hameray Publishing Group is giving away lots of books and a set of finger puppets. Information about the contest can be found by clicking here, or by reading and clicking on the image below. 

 

To learn more, you can visit Hameray Publishing and Mrs. Wishy-Washy on these social media sites: 

• https://www.facebook.com/Hameray 
• https://www.facebook.com/Mrs.Wishy.Washy 
• https://twitter.com/Hameray 
•  http://www.pinterest.com/hameray/ 
• http://blog.hameraypublishing.com/blog/