This story time was initially built around Jon Klassen's This Is Not My Hat. My goal was for it to be a weekend story time that played off the 2022 Summer Reading theme of oceans but it morphed into something different. Here's the run down of my Hat Story Time . . . 

On my flannel board, there were 5 different hats that we talked about first: Police Officer, party, Cowboy, Baseball cap and a Scuba Divers helmet (the other hats pictured will come in later!)

Then we read our first book. 

BOOK: This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen

ACTION RHYME: Hats On Everyone

This was found on Storytime Katie's blog with credit to Perry Public Library.  

Hats on police officers starchy and blue (salute)

Hats on fire fighters shiny and new (spray water hose)

Hats on rulers, very grand (look regal)

Hats on astronauts when they land (weightless)

Hats on construction workers on a site (hammer)

Hats on kids right their bike ( handlebars)

Hats on cowboys out in the sun (shade eyes)

Hats on almost everyone (hold hands out to side)

Once that was over, we added the remaining hats to our board, identifying each one as it went up.This set us up for our flannel board activity which was a guessing game. 

FLANNEL BOARD: Little Cat, Where Are You?

Chant: Little cat, little cat, where are you? 

            Are you hiding under the _______ hat?

Before we began, I asked each  kid to think of a hat and when the time came, I would point to them and they could respond with which type of hat they thought the cat was hiding under and I would pull it off the board. 

A note about my pieces: The images were printed onto cardstock paper with large strips of felt glued to the back. I pressed them under a large stack of books to dry. They should've dried flat, right? NO! They STILL managed to dry wavy. If they'd have been sturdier, I'd have let the kids pull them off the board but they were too precariously stuck to the board for that. 

Funnily enough, after going around the entire room having kids each pick a hat, the cat was hiding under the very last hat chosen. This tickled everyone in the room, including me which is why I forgot to sing the next song which was supposed to be . . . 

Click HERE for the link of my hats used.

SONG: Silly Hat Song

Instead, we skipped straight to our second book.

BOOK: Hooray For Hat! by Brian Won

For this book, I tried something a little different. Our library recently ordered Move, Play, Learn: Interactive Storytimes with Music, Movement and More by Alyssa Jewell. In this book, she promotes ideas to make your entire storytime interactive, not just different elements. So our group pantomimed this book while also repeating the 2 common refrains: "Hooray for Hat!" and "Go Away, I'm Grumpy"

ACTION FUN: OPPOSITES

Because grumpy and happy are opposites we segwayed into talking about opposites. The group listed some really good ones like "hot and cold", "loud and quiet", "big and small", "right and left" and we acted them out or moved our bodies to fit the different ideas. 

SONG: Bread and Butter, Marmalade and Jam

Only because we say "hello" in opposite ways.

MUSIC SONG: If You're Happy And You Know It by Pancake Manor

And that was it! It was a really good storytime, even with the incredibly wide range of ages in attendance (babies to 3rd grade!!). The only thing I wish that had been different is that I wish I'd have remembered to sing the Silly Hat Song! Urgh, oh well. 

Happy Storytelling!

Gilmore Girls season 2 aired from October 9, 2001 to May 21, 2002. The sources for each fact follows each graphic. 

More insights to come!

May 2 is International Harry Potter Day. Here are 2 activities that I threw together to celebrate Harry Potter for the week.

Eat Slugs, Malfoy!

For inspiration, I was flipping through Jim Kay's illustrated version of Chamber of Secrets when this idea came to me. I knew I wanted something eye grabbing, right as kids walked into the room and this was it. 

The concept behind this was, if Ron's curse had worked as it should have, Draco would have been vomiting up slugs instead of Ron. 

So for this, kids could color slugs and put them in Draco's mouth. Weird, yes but the kids LOVED it!

Here's a bit more on how my Draco was built . . . 

The second activity was another poster board prompt, my most recent passive program obsession. 

Question: There are hundreds of characters in the Harry Potter series. How many can we list?

There were repeats on the board (I expected there to be) and a few people who were too shy to contribute because they couldn't think of un-named characters (even though I encouraged them to write duplicates) but all in all, this table got a good deal of traffic. 

Undoubtedly, there would have been more participation if I had chosen a different prompt but I wanted to do something different.