Action Rhyme: I've Got A Cold

I've got a cold (point to yourself)
My nose can't smell (point to your nose)
My eyes are red (point to eyes)
I don't feel well (hand on head)
So I'll drink my juice (pretend to drink)
And go to bed . . . (fold hands under head)
My nose feels better (points to nose)
And so does my head! (point to head)

Use your best stuffy nose voice until bedtime, then for the last 2 lines, use your normal voice. 

Before our poem, we all practiced using our stuffy nose voices by introducing ourselves. 

Song: Herman the Worman

Sitting on a fence post chewing my bubble gum (smack, smack, smack, smack)
Playing with my yoyo.
Doowap, doowap, doowap (pretend to yoyo)
Doowap, doowap, doowap (pretend to yoyo)
And along came Herman the Worman
and he was this big (indicate size with fingers/hands)
I said, "Yo Herman, what's up?"
He said, "I ate my sister".

Repeat verses with Herman getting larger as he eats through the family (sister, brother, dog, mother, father - some combination like that).

This song was included after mentioning how sometimes food can make us sick whether it be allergies, food poisoning or (in this case) over-eating.

Flannel Story: 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

Freddy the Frog brought our story time clues to help us figure out our theme.

SurLaLune Storytime was a valuable resource for this theme.

 

These characters are copies of this artwork found in a google search. 

They were copied onto poster board and color was added. 

 While my Story Times usually last about 30 minutes, this one last ONE HOUR & 15 MINUTES!! Total anomaly and I'll tell you all about it after I give you the run-down for this themed Story Time.

 

In addition to a book display, this poster board prompt was put out on a table the week prior to July 4th. 

All the answers were really great! The one that most people commented on was, "I would change gas prices". 

Our Poetry Month Passive Program table in the Youth Services Department focused on acrostic poems and nursery rhymes.

These are vertical poems in which each letter begins a word.

 

This story time begins with ponds and creatures that live in/around ponds before segueing into rain. Here's the run-down . . . 

After our Good Morning songs, we had a special guest: Freddy the Frog! He brought clues with him about our storytime theme but before he would share those clues, we had to do a special hippity hoppity dance with him. This segment was 100% stolen borrowed from Wake County Public Library. 

RHYME: Hippity Hoppity Dance

Hip, hop, hippity, hop

Let's hop to the front

And turn around

Hop back once

And touch the ground.

Hop to the left

And then once more

Hop to the right

And sit on the floor. 

Then we read our first book.

BOOK: Ribbit! by Rodrigo Folgueria

MUSIC SONG: The Stand-Up Sit-Down Song by Rick Goldin

SONG: Five Green and Speckled Frogs

( . . . Ok, so we technically sang 3 Green Speckled Frogs . . . )

From here, we talked a little more about where water for lakes, rivers and ponds comes from. 

We talked about groundwater and looked at this picture.

 This was found on the Groundwater Foundation website. 

This is where we changed from ponds to rain in our storytime because rain also helps fill ponds. 

Because it's been storming alot in our area lately, we sang a song about thunder.

SONG: Thunder Pounding (tune: Frere Jacques)

Thunder pounding, thunder pounding. (slap knees loudly)

Crash, boom, bang. Crash, boom, bang (clap, slap knees loudly, palms open out front)

Little falling rain drops, little falling raindrops. (raindrops falling)

Kiss the ground, kiss the ground. (slap knees quietly)

The last 2 verses are sung quieter than the first 2.

BOOK: Where Does Kitty Go In The Rain by Harriet Ziefert

MUSIC SONG: Boots by Laurie Berkner

The kids didn't seem to like this song as much as the first. 

SONG: Skinnamarink

Skinnamarink was our ending song before everyone got a hand stamp. The younger kids really liked it and I will definitely be ending my storytimes with this song in the future. 

My normal go-to good-bye storytime song is The More We Get Together but it's felt a little stale lately. You know how it is. 

Hope this plan gives you some ideas! Happy Storytelling!

 

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 . . . 

After our good morning songs, we talked about how hats have different purposes and why someone might wear one hat and not another.

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. 

 

BOOK: 

In "Cubs In The Tub" by Candace Fleming,  Helen Martini takes care of tiger cubs that her husband brings home. She cares for them as they grow and when officials come to collect them, Helen goes to the zoo with them. She became the first ever female zookeeper at the Bronx Zoo in New York City. I really wanted to read this book and because Helen Martini is an obsure person, this was more of a zookeeper storytime.

In addition to this one, we also read "Pierre the Penguin" by Jean Marzollo.

It is a very short, rhyming book about a penguin who loses his feathers and the zookeeper who finds a way to help grow them back.

Songs:

You Can Hear The Lions Roaring At The Zoo (tune: If You're Happy and You Know It)

You can hear the lions roaring at the zoo, ROAR! ROAR!

You can hear the lions roaring at the zoo, ROAR! ROAR!

You can hear the lions roaring, you can hear the lions roaring

You can hear the lions roaring at the zoo, ROAR! ROAR!

(elephants trumpeting, eagles screeching, monkeys eeking) 

and then because we read a book about penguins....

Did You Ever See a Penguin Come To Tea.

This is a really cute song about a penguin coming to tea party and then making fun motions. Click here for a run-down of this song. 

Activity: What animal is the most dangerous? 

Using a small list of the 10 most dangerous creatures, found on Science Focus, we played a quick guessing game of what animals were the most dangerous. 

We also flipped through our Life-Size Zoo books to see how some different animals compared to each other in size. Because it's a small group that comes to this program, we can sit in a circle in the floor and flip through books like this. 

 Activity: Pretend Zookeepers

Here and there, we kept discussing tasks of zookeepers and at the end we pretended to be zookeepers. Using our puppets, I set up 5 cages, copying the idea found here. Each deputized zookeeper was given a clipboard with a form to fill out about whichever animal they wanted.

Then of course, each cage had a informational sign posted next to it. 

Here are my signs. Unfortunately, no pictures of the set-up.

Facts come from Zookeepers by Tony Hyland.

 

After our Good Morning songs, this is what we did for breakfast storytime!

RHYME: Bread and Butter, Marmalade and Jam

Bread and butter, marmalade and jam

Let's say "hello" as fast as we can.

Hello!

In this song we practice saying "hello" in different ways. Fast/slow, quiet/loud, mean/nice, high/low

Hidden Game: Find The Strawberry

Strawberry, Strawberry, let's take a look. 

Are you under the __color__ cookbook?

For this one I used pieces from our felt version of The Little Mouse, the Red Rip Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear. At one point I had considered reading this story and/or retelling it with the felt pieces.

In Move, Play, Learn: Interactive Storytime with Music and Movement, Alyssa Jewell talks about story dramas as a good element to add into storytimes for  elementary ages. Often, our Saturday storytimes have a wide range of ages that include elementary students. 

To incorporate interactive play in this storytime, I considered reading The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear and then letting the group retell the story on their own with the felt pieces.

Let me get this out of the way by saying: In no way is this my cutest story time to date. It was a theme that I inherited and I struggled finding the right material for it. So if you're trying to create a story time around this concept, maybe this will help! 

After our good morning songs, we talked about the word, "perseverance". We practiced saying it out loud and defined it.

SONG: Try Again (Tune: If You're Happy And You Know It)

If you make a big mistake, try again x2

If you make a big mistake, take a breath and show your strength

If you make a big mistake, try again

This was the only strongly themed song of the time. 

BOOK: Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candace Fleming

When it came time to pick out my main book, there were several that were considered but none of them were it. You know? This one wasn't it either but it's a cute story, nonetheless. Others considered were the 2 far right titles in the graphic. 

MUSIC SONG: Jump, Jump by Joanie Leeds

Because this was such a long book I knew I wanted to have a dance song directly following this book. 

To seat the kids down and get them ready for my next bit (talking about Walt Disney) we has a sitting rhyme.

RHYME: Point to a window

Point to a window

Point to a door

Point to the ceiling

Point to the floor. 

Between this rhyme and our next rhyme, I took a moment to talk about Walt Disney and a few of his failures. The main fact I shared with the kids was that he was once fired from  newspaper because he "lacked creativity", he had no imagination. This idea was tied back to the theme because he persevered and kept drawing/creating and if he had given up, where would Disney be now? 

Since Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse, I felt like I could include the next rhyme . . . 

RHYME: Little Clapping Mouse

Except for this rhyme, I swapped 2 words and instead of being a clapping mouse, we sang about a tapping mouse and passed out rhythm sticks.Here are the words. Each asterisk * signals a tap with the sticks.

Behind the tree * *

And under the house * *

There lived a teeny * *

Tiny mouse * *

She loved to sing * *

She loved to clap * *

But most of all * *

She loved to tap * *

She tapped all night * *

She tapped all day * *

She tapped to frighten * *

The cat away * * * * * * * * * * * (lots of taps, meow)

BOOK: Leo the Late Bloomer by Robert Kraus

Then we ended with another music song because I felt like this was lacking in interactive elements.  

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

Initially, I wasn't fond of this song but it's quickly become one of my go-to favorites to throw in if I need something on a moments notice.

 

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.