Mrs. McNosh

Because two of our weekly storytimes this week are after Halloween, we decided to do our Halloween storytime last week, so this week we did Mrs. McNosh stories by Sarah Weeks.  We read:

Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash

Oh My Gosh, Mrs. McNosh!

and Mrs. McNosh and the Great Big Squash

My colleague Lou created the most wonderful flannel set to use as a washline and clothespin story.  You can see that here.

Between stories we did an action rhyme called "Washing Clothes" by Susan Dailey that can be found here and "Early in the Morning" by Judy Nichols from v. 1, n. 6 of Children's Programming Monthly, the My Clothes issue.

Our craft was to bedazzle some of the wash from Mrs. McNosh's line with foam stickers, plastic jewels, buttons, sequins, and markers.  Here's a sample:



Comparing

For an upcoming storytime on comparing/relative size, I'm using a plan similar to one I did at my other library last year.  We'll read:

Bigger Than Daddy by Harriet Ziefert

 

 

Up! Tall! and High! by Ethan Long

and Is It Larger? Is It Smaller? by Tana Hoban

I'm going to reuse the flannel story A House For Birdie based on the book by Stuart J. Murphy that I think was first posted on Storytiming.  It's absolutely perfect for discussing relative size. 

We'll also watch an episode of Peg + Cat, a new PBS Kids show that will premiere sometime next fall.  In this episode Peg matches pieces of cake to her picnic guests based on their size--the smallest piece goes to her smallest guest and the biggest piece to the biggest guest.  There are also lots of chickens in the episode.  :-)

Our craft will be a set of nesting dolls made from paper cups (small, larger, largest). I'll post a pic when the sample is ready.

 

Once again we'll have take-home activities from Virtual Pre-K for families to do for more comparing fun.

Where Is It?: Location Words

We're doing a storytime about location words, and these are the books we'll read:

In Front of My House by Marianne Dubuc

Peepsqueak by Leslie Ann Clark (I'll do some questioning such as, "Who is behind the sheep?")

 

and All About Where by Tana Hoban

After the first book, we'll jam to the song "Up and Down" by The Pop-Ups with scarves.  This is one of my favorite activity songs for storytimes!  We'll follow the directions in the lyrics:

Up and Down by The Pop-Ups
Pick it up, put it down (4 x)
Turn yourself around (2 x)
Stand up, sit down (4 x)
Turn yourself around (2 x)
Toss it up, it drops down (4 x)
Turn yourself around (2 x)
Up and down, up and down (2 x)
Turn it up, turn it down (4 x)
Turn yourself around (2 x)
Sun goes up, sun goes down (4 x)
Turn yourself around (2 x)
Up and down, up and down (4 x)

 

The Tooty Ta song would work just as well, but I just love the Pop-Ups!

After the second book, we're going on a bear hunt!  There are lots of versions on the web, but I'm planning to use the book version retold by Michael Rosen.

Our craft is a paper bag bear puppet similar to this one from enchantedlearning.com:

Parents will be given a take-home sheet of location word activities to continue the fun at home. 

Other books that could be used for this storytime:

Over, Under, and Through/ Tana Hoban
Over and Under/ Marthe Jocelyn and Tom Slaughter
We're Going on a Lion Hunt/ David Axtell

Patterns and Sorting

The books we'll read for our patterned storytime are:
Bees, Snails, and Peacock Tails by Betsy Franco and Steve Jenkins

Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion

and The Monkey with a Bright Blue Bottom by Steve Smallman

After our first book, we'll play a finish-the-pattern flannel game from Notes from the Story Room.

After the second book, we'll sing "Clap Your Hands" from American Folk, Game & Activity Songs by Pete Seeger.  We'll talk about how patterns can be in sounds as well as images.

Our craft today will be to make a patterned friendship bracelet with pony beads--the pattern is the child's choice.

Parents will be given a take-home sheet of activities from the Virtual Pre-K kit so parent and child can have more fun with patterns at home.

For toddler storytime, instead of the finish-the-pattern flannel game, we'll match patterned dinosaurs with solid colored ones, an idea from Piper Loves the Library.

Other pattern and sorting books for storytime friends to check out:

Alike or Not Alike?: A Photo Sorting Game/ Kristen McCurry
I Like Black and White/ Barbara Jean Hicks
Beep Beep, Vroom Vroom/ Stuart J. Murphy
Old Bear's Surprise Painting/ Jane Hissey
A Pair of Socks/ Stuart J. Murphy
Patterns Outside/ Daniel Nunn
Sort It Out!/ Barbara Mariconda
The Spider Weaver: A Legend of Kente Cloth/ Margaret Musgrove
Spotty, Stripy, Swirly: What Are Patterns?/ Jane Brocket
A Star in My Orange: Looking for Nature's Shapes/ Dana Meachen Rau
Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature/ Joyce Sidman

 

 

Shapes

In an upcoming week during preschool and toddler storytimes, we're learning about shapes.  The books we'll read for preschool storytime are:

Circle Dogs by Kevin Henkes

Circus Shapes by Stuart J. Murphy and

Lots of Dots by Craig Frazier

In honor of shapes, after the first book we'll do a circle song, "Bluebird, Bluebird."  If you've never done this one before, you can find some demos on YouTube.  We'll do ours somewhat like this one.

After the second book, we'll build a picture with flannel shapes, an idea from a Flannel Friday post from Mel's Desk. I'll give a couple of pieces to each child, we'll decide what to build, and each child will contribute her/his shapes to the picture where they make the most sense. 



After the third book, we'll play another circle song game I saw on Everything Preschool.  The shapes are just cut out of construction paper and laminated.  We'll sit in a circle with the shapes in the center, and the child who is "it" will walk around our circle as we sing, [to the tune of "Skip to My Lou"]
Lost my circle, what do I do?
Lost my circle, what do I do?
Lost my circle, what do I do?
What do I do, my darling?
Then the child will find the shape we've been singing about.  We'll repeat, substituting the names of the other shapes until we've found all of them, and for each verse a different child will be "it."

There will be a take-home sheet for parents for more fun with shapes at home.

For the craft this week, we'll be making quilt squares with wallpaper samples.  One of the youth staff made the quilt templates, and we'll provide children with the wallpaper shapes that they'll glue onto the templates to make a design. 

For toddler storytime, the books will be Shape by Shape by Suze MacDonald, Circus Shapes by Stuart Murphy, and One Sunny Day by Tammi Salzano.  In place of the building blocks flannel activity, we'll do a flannel shape matching activity from Piper Loves the Library. I made triangles and squares in addition to circles, and I'll keep a set for myself, distribute one from the matching set to each child, and sing this song, to the tune of "Happy Birthday to You."

Which circles are the same? 
Which circles are the same? 
Can you tell me, can you tell me,
Which circles are the same?

Children with the matching shapes will come to the flannel board during the song and put theirs together.  Then we'll repeat the verse, substituting the other shapes when appropriate. 

Other books considered that were displayed for check-out after storytime:

Apes Find Shapes/ Jane Belk Moncure

Circle/ Sophie Schrey

Not a Box/ Antoinette Portis

Perfect Square/ Michael Hall

Pond Circle/ Betsy Franco

Rectangle/ Bryony Jones

Shape Capers/ Cathryn Falwell

Shapes, Shapes, Shapes/ Tana Hoban

So Many Circles, So Many Squares/ Tana Hoban

Square/ Bryony Jones

Triangle/ Bryony Jones

Counting

Our preschool and toddler storytimes for an upcoming week will have us counting up a storm.  As children are arriving, I'll ask their grownups to write their children's names on a grid I made on a large sheet of bulletin board paper, one letter per space.  It looks something like this:

D	e	b
D	i	a	n	e
K	a	y
M	i	s	s	i	e
D	e	n	i	s	e

I'll refer to our grid later in the storytime.

We always begin with the same hello song and end with the same goodbye song.

There are so many great counting books that choosing three was difficult, but I finally settled on

                                                   Doggone Dogs! by Karen Beaumont

One Drowsy Dragon by Ethan Long and

One Duck Stuck by Phyllis Root.

Although there are lots and lots of counting books, not all of them make good storytime reads, so I looked for books that tell a story, too.

After the first book, we'll sing "Over in the Meadow,"  The Wiggles' version.   After the second book, we'll play a game called Count & Move (Virtual Pre-K! Ready for Math [kit], Chicago Public Schools and PBS Kids, 2011).  For this game, I made two sets of cards.  One set includes numbers and the other includes actions (jump, clap, twirl, etc.).  I'll draw one card from each deck and we'll perform that move the number of times the card shows. 

After the last book, we'll do a number of things with our name grid: count the number of letters in the first name, find other names that are the same length (easy to see on a grid), look at the second name and decide whether it has more or fewer letters than the first name, identify the longest and shortest names on the grid, and note who has the same number of letters in their names. 

I'll give each parent a take-home sheet of counting activities, but so that they wouldn't feel as if it is homework, I'll say something like, "If you had fun counting today, here are some things you can do at home to practice counting."   The take-home sheet comes directly from the Virtual Pre-K kit mentioned above.

Our craft this week is a circus train with animals to count:

For the toddler storytime counterpart, the activities are the same, but for books I'll use One Pup's Up by Marsha Wilson Chall, Ducking for Apples by Lynne Berry, and Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin Jr.  For our toddler storytimes, the hello and goodbye songs are slightly different, and we always play "Ring Around the Rosy," which was a part of the toddler storytime routine at this library long before I was hired.  (During one of the first storytimes I did when I accidentally forgot to play "Ring Around the Rosy," one of my storytime friends reminded me that we couldn't leave storytime without doing that first!)

Books that I also considered that will be displayed for check-out after storytime:

10 Little Hot Dogs/ John Himmelman

10 Little Rubber Ducks/ Eric Carle

At the Edge of the Woods: A Counting Book/ Cynthia Cotten

Bunny Party/ Rosemary Wells

Chicka Chicka 1 2 3/ Bill Martin, Jr.

Double the Ducks/ Stuart J. Murphy

Look Whooo's Counting/ Suse MacDonald

One Little Chicken: A Counting Book/ David Elliott

One More Bunny: Adding from One to Ten/ Rick Walton

Seven Hungry Babies/ Candace Fleming

Ten Red Apples/ Pat Hutchins

Cats!

One of my colleagues brought to my attention the book Cat Secrets by Jef Czekaj just after we added it to our collection, and I'm finally getting around to building a cat-themed storytime for toddlers for next week. I love books like this that invite interaction with the audience, and this one goes way up on my list of favorites along with Can You Make a Scary Face and Is Everyone Ready for Fun? by Jan Thomas, and Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems.  The books I'm reading this week are:

Cat Secrets by Jef Czekaj

Sleepy Kittens by  Jill and Martin Leman

and Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat illustrated by Annie Kubler for Child's Play.

Between stories, we'll do an action rhyme:

"Five Little Kittens" from Storytimes for Two-Year-Olds by Judy Nichols, p. 58.
One, two, three, four, five, (count fingers on one hand)
Five little kittens standing in a row. (stand up straight)
They nod their heads to the children so. (nod head)
The run to the left, they run to the right (run in place facing left, then turn and run in place facing right)
They stand up and stretch in the bright sunlight. (stretch arms overhead)
Along comes a dog, looking for some fun. (hunch shoulders)
Meow, meow, (make scratching motions)
See that doggie run! (clap hands quickly)

and a flannel rhyme:

"Rainbow Kittens" from Early Literacy Storytimes @ Your Library by Saroj Nadkarni Ghoting and Pamela Martin-Diaz, p. 111
Six little kittens found a box of paint.
They jumped right in...their mother will faint!
The first little kitten came out all red.
"I'll be orange," the second kitten said.
The third little kitten turned bright yellow.
"I'll be green," said the next little fellow.
The fifth kitten said, "My favorite is blue."
"Purple for me," said the sixth with a mew.
Dancing home the kittens go
To show their mother a KITTEN RAINBOW!

We'll also sing "There's a Dog in School" (there's a cat in the second verse) from H.U.M. by Carole Peterson, and we'll repeat that song over the next few weeks when storytimes focus on the other animals in the song--dog, rabbit, and we just had a duck storytime last month.

Our craft, a paper bag cat, comes from http://www.freepreschoolcrafts.com.  We will use markers to add stripes or spots instead of painting the bags, though.

Spring!

This week's toddler storytime celebrates spring, which has arrived early here in Iowa this year.  

We will be reading:

Kitten's Spring by Eugenie Fernandes


Spring Things by Bob Raczka


and Wake Up! Wake Up! A Springtime Lift-the-Flap Book by Nancy Davis.


Our flannel rhyme this week is Five Little Flowers from Children's Programming Monthly, vol. 1, no. 7, p. 10.

Five Little Flowers

Five little flowers grew by my door.

I picked one for my mother, and then there were four.

Four little flowers, pretty as can be.

I picked one for my father, and then there were three.

Three little flowers, what could I do?

I picked one for my sister, and then there were two.

Two little flowers out in the sun.

I picked one for my brother, and then there was one.

One little flower, isn't this fun?

I picked one for you, and then there were none.

We will also make music to "Weather Rhythms" from H.U.M. (Highly Usable Music) by Carole Peterson.  I will distribute rhythm sticks and we'll use them to make the "pit pat" of the rain and the thunder.

Our craft this week was designed by Mallory, one of the youth library assistants.  I also used the pattern to make the flannel flowers for this week's rhyme.  We used our circle and scalloped circle punches to punch out the circles for the flowers, we cut out the leaves, and children will glue them to craft sticks to make flowers.  For a 3-D effect, children can scrunch the edges of the scalloped circle.

Big and Little

I am fortunate to have been invited to participate in a grant called Ready to Learn with Iowa Public Television, and one of their new programs currently in development is a fun, engaging cartoon called Peg + Cat, which includes match concepts for preschoolers.  This inspired the toddler storytime I'm finally posting today, which highlights the concepts of relative size and spatial capacity. 

The books we read were:

Tiny Little Fly by Michael Rosen


Big Little by Leslie Patricelli

And as a flannel story, A House for Birdie by Stuart J. Murphy. The idea for making this particular story into a flannel story came from Miss Mary Liberry at Flannel Friday.

I realized too late that I had made the smallest round bird gold, so I had to change the names of a couple of the birds to match the story.

We also did some action rhymes, but I can't post them because I didn't put into my plan where I found them.

As a craft, parents and children traced their hands onto green construction paper--the parent's hand is big and the child's hand is little.  Then the parent cut them out and the child taped them to our windows, where we had put up a tree that we intended to change through the seasons (buds and flowers in spring, leaves in the summer, colored leaves in the fall, etc.), but it isn't holding up as well as we thought it would, so it may be more temporary than that.  Our unseasonably warm weather this spring has also kicked all of the vegetation into high gear, so it looked more like May here last month than March.  I love that!

Because of the backlight on the windows, you can see only the silhouette of the trees, and to the left of the second tree, there is a tiny pond with a duck swimming there.  The tree was created by one of our interns, and the green hands look very leaflike, I think.

I love to do this kind of craft occasionally that allows children to have their work displayed in the library and that adds warmth and color to the children's department.

What a Hoot

For toddler storytime next week, we'll have an owl theme.  We'll read Little Owl's Night by Divya Srinivasan, Little Owl Lost by Chris Haughton, and Wow! Said the Owl by Tim Hopgood.

I found our flannel rhyme at Sunflower Storytime .

Five Hoot Owls

Five hoot owls sitting in a tree.
One flew away! How many do you see?
One, two, three, four.

Four hoot owls sitting in a tree.
One flew away! How many do you see?
One, two, three.

Three hoot owls...etc.

And our flannel song also comes from Sunflower Storytime.  I really liked the look of the birds from A House for Birdie from Miss Merry Liberry, so I made my birds like those.

Owl in the Tree (sung to the tune of Skip to my Lou)

Owl in the tree goes, "Hoo, hoo, hoo,"
Owl in the tree goes, "Hoo, hoo, hoo,"
Owl in the tree goes, "Hoo, hoo, hoo,"
Hoo, hoo, hoo, my darling.

Robin in the nest goes, "Tweet, tweet, tweet..."
Duck in the pond goes, "Quack, quack, quack..."
Rooster in the yard goes, "Cock a doodle doo..."

Our craft will be paper bag owls.  We used this craft at our Diagon Alley event in December at our Eeylops Owl Emporium, but I've adapted it for toddlers by having the pieces already cut out.  They'll just have to stuff the bag, fold and staple the top with the help of their grown-ups, and glue on the eyes, beak and tummy feathers.  Instead of cutting the bag for the tummy feathers, I've cut out bigger circles that they can use markers to dot for the feathers.  We found this idea on Pinterest, but the link no longer exists or I would post it.