Christmas Storytime

 

The two books in this story time are "The Great Santa Stakeout" by Betsy Bird and "Bear Stays Up For Christmas" by Karma Wilson

Here's the run down . . .

Action Song: Up On The Housetop

Upon on the housetop, reindeer pause (point up to ceiling)

Out jumps good old Santa Clause (jump)

Down through the chimney with lots of toys ( point down)

All for the little ones, Christmas joys (point to each other)

Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn't go? (Make Santa belly and shrug shoulders)

Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn't go? (Make Santa belly and shrug shoulders)

Up one the housetop, click, click, click (clap hands)

Down through the chimeny with good St. Nick (touch ground)

credit: Storytime Katie

Book: The Great Santa Stakeout by Betsy Bird

Flannel Poem: Over By The Christmas Tree

This was an adaption of  the "Down At The Corner Bakery Shop" poem. I don't recall where I originally stumbled across the poem, but here it is on My Montessori Journey blog.

Mine goes like this:

Over by the Christmas tree, it was getting pretty late.

There were (#) colored cookies sitting on a plate.

Along came (name), hungry for a treat,

And s/he picked the (color) one to take home and eat.

 Then, there were no more cookies to leave for Santa so the kids can bring them back up.

Poem: A Chubby Little Snowman 

A chubby little snowman

Had a carrot nose.

Along came a bunny, 

And what do you suppose?

That hungry little bunny

looking for his lunch

ate the snowman's nose

with a munch, munch, munch.

 Actions for this one include: pointing to your nose, making a bunny with 2 fingers and having it jump, pretending to eat a carrot. 

This one led into the next story well since there was a bunny in it.

Book: Bear Stays Up For Christmas

Song: Jingle Bells 

For this one, we played the song over a bluetooth speaker and rang our bells and danced to the music. Our jingle bells are attached to fabric and can be velcro-ed to your wrist.

Another option for Jingle Bells is this . . .

Song: Jingle Bells

(As you sing, clap your hands. We did this with bells around our wrists so we clapped but jingled too..)

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh, hey!

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.

Then we stopped clapping and started ringing our bells, keeping the tune.

Jingle bells real fast, jingle bells real slow, jingle bells real high, jingle bells real low.

Jingle bells to the left, jingle bells to the right, jingle bells behind your back, jingle bells in plain sight.

Stop ringing and resume clapping.

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh, hey!

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.

💚💛💜

Book Blurbs Display

 

This is a little display I put up on an empty shelf. Nothing ground-breaking, but thought I'd drop some pictures here.

Didn't realize this one was at such an odd angle until I uploaded it!

Truth be told, I haven't read all these books on display. How I wrote my blurbs was a combination of pulling from Goodreads reviews and publisher description on the title page. 

If you're curious, the font I used is called Children Book Kids Font from FontMeme.com.

💚💛💜

Matching Train Shapes Game

 This game was designed for a Boxcar Children book spotlight but ended up being its own thing.

For this game, players align cars in order based on the symbol. So the locomotive has a yellow diamond, the next car should begin with a yellow diamond.

As you can see, the car that begins with a yellow diamond ends with a blue arrow. You would need to find the car with the blue arrow next and so on and so on.

Here's a template I made if you want to use my train cars! 

The shapes were had drawn and traced onto scraps of paper.

After I had cut my train cars and attached my shapes and wheels, I laminated these guys. 

This was because I knew I wanted to put them on the magnet board and felt they needed an extra layer of stability. 

Plus, the magnet board was going to be on the floor, leaning against furniture instead of on the table so - hello, baby level. Un-laminated construction paper wouldn't have stood a chance!

After they were cut out from the lamination film, I just stuck some magnets on them and they were ready to go! 

💚💛💜

Grinch Passive Program

 

This idea comes from ResLife Crafts. It was found during a google search. Here's the original.

 

 And here's the freshly stapled version I came up with . . .

I had tried to come up with ways to make this more of my own instead of copying ResLife Crafts. Other questions and prompts included . . .

• What is the Grinch up to?
• What does the Grinch have to be happy about? (Because he is grinning in my drawing)
• Why is the Grinch grinning?

But in the end, I went with "Tell him what you're doing this season!" because I felt like that would get me a more diverse set of answers which is what I wanted. 

 

💚💛💜

Christmas Bulletin Board

 Tis the Season to be reading!

Something about this bulletin board location pains my colors in pictures. 

The snowflakes are white, the "Tis the...To Be" is pale tan in color.

 

Idea for this board came from this image I found on Pinterest . . .

(If this is your handiwork, let me know so I can give due credit!)

 

This reindeer inspired my Rudolph. 

 

For many of my characters, I would use an overhead projector and trace them onto posterboard. However recently, I had to say goodbye to my bright, helpful friend 😭 Since then I have started printing out large images and piecing them together to slowly trace onto posterboard. 

If this sounds tedious, it's because it is. It is very important to me to have my dimensions correct though so that's what I do.

 

For Rudolph, I looked at the linked picture and drew my version on a scrap piece of paper. Then I scanned my Rudolph, enlarged him and completed the process above. 

Some things I can freehand but when it comes to large objects, sometimes it's easier to just trace. Drawing a doodle, scanning it and then enlarging it to trace turned out very well! 

 

💚💛💜

Thanksgiving Mobile Craft

 

This Thanksgiving Mobile is a fun little craft for kids to put together over the Thanksgiving holiday. 

My idea behind this was that kids could be do this with family at Grandma's or at Aunt Joan's or where ever you go to celebrate Thanksgiving. 

PREP

To prep this craft, I printed off holiday inspired clipart onto white cardstock and cut them out. 

It also uses 4 strips of yarn, and requires you to find a stick from the yard.

Here is what my example craft looks like! 

👉👉👉

How To Complete The Craft

There are 2 ways that your kiddos can fill out these images. 

Option 1: Your kiddo can write what they're thankful for on each image, coming up with a total of 8 different things.

Option 2: Your kiddo can take the cardstock images around the house at Thanksgiving and ask each family member to write something they're thankful for on a card.

As an added element, they could even say that no 2 family members can write the same thing! 

After filling out the cards, kids can color them. Attach the yarn to the stick and then attach the cards to the yarn as pictured above.

And that's it!

A word of warning...

I prepped 50 of these for my library kiddos which was actually a LOT of cutting. 

So if you have volunteers and need something for them to do, this may be the craft your looking for!

No PDF for this craft. Here are my JPEGS. I printed 3 turkeys to one sheet.

All the other images were printed out on a single sheet.

So for these, I would print out 1 sheet of turkeys to every 3 sheets of Thanksgiving images.

This is my instruction sheet I included in the packet.

Just for fun, instead of filling out my Thanksgiving mobile as I, me, Anna would, I filled it out as if I was Charlie Brown. 

My coworker helped me come up with a list of all the things Charlie Brown would be thankful for.

And of course, I made a sign about it...

Maybe you can read what all Charlie Brown in thankful for in this picture! 

He's thankful for Baseball, my dad's barber shop, my friends Peppermint Patty and Linus, Snickerdoodles, the beach, comic books, my family and Snoopy!

That's all I have for this one! Feel free to use it 😃 

Oh! Also, I did not make ANY of these images - the corn, hat, pumpkin, pie, leaf, etc. They were all found on google images and I used them to design this mobile craft. 

💚💛💜

Early Chapter Books For Kids

 

This list is aimed to help emerging independent readers, aging around the 5-8 mark. 

For beginning chapter books, I feel like the most important thing it keeping the reader engaged so by having adventures and cliff-hangers, books are harder to put down! However, they’re also in that transition stage between picture books and chapter books. If a book doesn’t have enough pictures, it can look daunting and we don’t want to discourage our readers, we want them to gain confidence as independent readers!

So with that being said, these are a few of my FAVORITE early chapter books.

Good Dog by Cam Higgins

Published: December 2020

This first-person narrative series currently included 8 books. Bo Davis is a farm dog and lives with his adoptive human family. In the first story, Bo loses his collar tag and visits other farm animals in search for it.

 This series includes an interracial couple (Bo’s human parents) and a 3-legged dog.

 Sample Page:

__________

The Fabled Stables by Jonathan Auxier

Published: October 2020

My favorite of the list! This combines the bold, eye-catching illustrations you find in picture books with a whimsical adventure story. 

 

The premise isn’t entirely new – a young boy, Auggie, works at a magical stable filled with magical creatures and constantly growing. When an empty stall appears, Auggie must venture through a portal into a magical realm to save a creature that needs the protection of the Fabled Stables. 

 

Sample Page: 

__________

Ana & Andrew by Christine Platt

Published: December 2018

Ana and Andrew are siblings that encounter realistic situations throughout the series like, learning new instruments, getting a pet, visiting the museum or enjoying a snow day. 

 

These beginner chapter books are short – 32 pages long- and in the few that I have read, Platt finds a way to tie in facts about African American history. For example, in The Magic Violin, the kids father tells them about Frederick Douglass who also played the violin.

 

Sample Page:

__________

Charlie & Mouse by Jonathan Auxier

Published: April 2019

Aside from Doggo and Pupper, this is the simplest book on the list. The sentences are very simple and it is only 36 pages long. In fact, I almost didn’t add it to this list.  

 

 In this story, siblings Charlie and Mouse are going camping with their parents. Charlie and Mouse tell stories and play with their imagination in the woods during their trip. It’s a very simple but fun story that leaves readers smiling.

 

This book is actually #4 in the series. There are currently 5 books in this series.

 

Sample Page:

__________

Our Friend Hedgehog: The Story of Us by Lauren Castillo

Published: May 2020

Caldecott Honor-winning artist, Lauren Castillo authors and illustrates this sweet and simple story about woodland critters finding friendship and bravery to recover one of their own. Hedgehog lives on a tiny island in a river, between two great woods and when his best friend Mutty (stuffed animal) is carried away by the wind during a storm, Hedgehog is desperate to find him. Along the way, he meets a wealth of other creatures who help him in his search. 

 

The illustrations in this book are beautiful and one thing I enjoyed about this was, each time a new animal was introduced, the animals greeted them in a different way. For example, Mole said “Bonjour”, Owl was greeted with “Guten Tag”, “Hola!”, “Salaam”, etc. Young readers may not catch on at the various common greetings in other parts of the world, but for adult readers, it’s a neat touch.

 

Sample Page:

__________

Kondo & Kezumi by David Goodner

Published: October 2020

Kondo and Kezumi live on a tropical island. One day, a bottle washes ashore and they find a map inside! The map is full of other islands. Kenzumi is excited about the contents on the map and convinced Kondo to build a boat and travel the ocean with her in this 3-book series (currently… maybe there will be more?).

 

Sample Page:   

__________

The Princess In Black by Shannon & Dean Hale

Published: April 2015

Husband and wife duo, Shannon and Dean Hale have come together for the Princess In Black series. 

 

This ongoing series currently has 9 books that center around Princess Magnolia, aka The Princess in Black. These books have reoccurring plots of the Princess in Black being alerted of a monster nearby, solving the monster situation and goats.  

 

Sample Page:

__________

Doggo and Pupper by Katherine Applegate

Published: March 2021

 

This early chapter book by Newberry Award winner, Katherine Applegate is sure to have your beginning reader giggling. Doggo has a great life – a terrific life. He takes naps, watches bug, plays with his human kiddos, etc. but his humans are worried that Doggo is bored and needs something more in his life. So they bring home Pupper which upsets the life that Doggo has come to know. Right now there are only 2 books in this series.

 

Sample Page:

__________

Mercy Watson by Kate DiCamillo

Published: December 2009

 

Kate Dicamillo’s 6-book collection centers around Mercy who isn’t just a pig to Mr. and Mrs. Watson but a porcine wonder. In the first book, Mercy decides to crawl into bed with her two-legged parents when she gets scared of the dark. When danger strikes, Mercy quickly jumps up from the bed and runs to the neighbors for sugar cookies – er, I mean… help! 

 

Sample Page: 

__________

Anne's Kindred Spirits by Kallie George

 Published: May 2019

 

A kid-friendly, accessible retelling of L.M. Montgomery's Anne Of Green Gables! The shown cover is actually book 2 in this early reader series. This is a must-read for young girl in your life.

 

Sample Page: 

💚💛💜