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:



Halloween Window Silhouettes

We're into silhouettes in our windows at my library...and shadow puppet shows, too.  I just had to share these spooky designs done by my artistically talented colleague Dan.  It must be nice to be so talented!

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