This story time focused on wind but in all honesty, our group didn't get around to all the things I had planned on. The group that came to this program were mainly 2's and 3's. Anyway, here's the run-down of my Wind Story Time. . . 

BOOK: DUCK! by Meg McKinlay

After our Good Morning songs, we read "DUCK!" by Meg McKinlay. In this book, it's a quiet afternoon on the farm except for Duck, who is running around yelling at all the animals, "DUCK!" The other animals explain to Duck that they are different animals and to stop calling them ducks. What
Duck is really doing is telling them to duck (get out of the way) - as a play on the 2 different meanings of the word "duck". 

What's happening though, is a storm is coming, which is why it was included. 

After our book, we played "Feel The Music" by Jack Hartmann, which has nothing to do at all with the theme - just getting our bodies moving.

Action Rhyme: I See The Wind

I see the wind when the leaves dance by (dance hands around)

I see the wind when the clothes wave "HI!" (wave hand)

I see the wind when the trees bend low (bend arms down)

I see the wind when the flags all blow (wave arms)

I see the wind when the when the kites fly high (raise arms high)

I see the wind when the clouds float by (wave hands gently)

I see the wind when it blows my hair (lift hair with hands)

I see the wind most everywhere! (hold hands out, palms up)

Felt Activity: 5 Kites

Way up high in the sky so blue

5 little kites flew and flew.

The wind blew hard and the wind blew loud 

And the wind blew the color kite off to the clouds. 

For this one, the kids made sound effects. When the "wind blew hard", they waved their arms like something blowing in the wind and when the "wind blew loud" they went "WHOOOSH". 

Action Song: 10 Little Flowers

1 little, 2 little, 3 little flowers. 4 little, 5 little, 6 little flowers. 7 little, 8 little, 9 little flowers. 10 little flowers in the spring. 

Give them rain and lots of sunshine. Give them rain and lots of sunshine. Give them rain and lots of sunshine so they grow up tall. 

Actions for this song in the first verse were just counting on fingers. For the 2nd verse, we made rain with our fingers fluttering down and then sunshine was making a ball with our arms and holding it above our head. 

Flannel Board Story: The Mouse and the Winds by Arnold Lobel

My felt pieces were copied from Storytime Shenanigans. And because we didn't have a copy of the story, I watched Lolly Hopwood's read-aloud on Youtube and wrote down the story. 

And in case you need the words, here's what I had written down. 

I don't know if it's verbatim from the story.

Then, because it's April (hello, National Poetry Month!) we ended with a poem. 

And aside from filler rhymes and songs, that's it.

Heroes of History is an afterschool story time that we've been trying out this school year. It is aimed at elementary ages and focuses on either a historical event or someone from history. 

This is what we did for Edwin Binney, the man behind the Crayola crayon.

BOOKS

For our narrative non-fiction book, we read "The Crayon Man: The True Story of the Inventor of Crayola Crayons" by Natasha Biebow. 

We also read, "The Day the Crayons Quit" by Drew Daywalt. 

For this story, I had made puppets out of card stock with words laminated onto the backside. 

Instead of reading the book, we divided up the Crayon puppets and each took turns reading our parts as we flipped through the book.

This is something I would do again in a heartbeat with other picture books written in letter forms! 

SONG

Because this program is attended by older kids, I've been gravitating towards camp songs to sing and dance to instead of traditional storytime songs. However, finding songs that fit is often a struggle. 

We sang, "Hi, My Name Is Joe" in this program but instead of working in a button factory, Joe worked in a crayon factory.

ACTIVITY
To end with, we played a guessing game. Over the years, Crayola crayons have had SO MANY names for their different colors. The premise of this game was to guess which names were NOT official Crayola names. 

In this easily printable game, I have 36 cards, each showing a color and its name but 9 display fake Crayola names. 

All the colors were laid out and the fake cards had a stamp on the back. If someone drew a fake color card, they'd know instantly.

These cards were printed on white card stock (for the real colors, the cards is the actual color of the crayon). Here's my PDF for you to print your own.

Since it's probably undreadable, check out the page where I found this fantastic list of current crayola colors! Just clicky clicky.