BOOKS

Books read for this November themed story time were "Thank You Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving" by Laurie Halse Anderson and "In November" by Cythia Rylant. The first one was a little long for the group that showed up but the parents really enjoyed it. 

Fun Fact: Our newest national holiday is Juneteenth. It was added in 2021. Before that, Martin Luther King Jr day was our newest holiday, having been added in 1983. 

MAGNET RHYME

 We Eat Turkey (tune of Frere Jacques)

We eat turkey x2
Oh so good x2
Always on Thanksgiving x2
Yum, yum, yum x2

last verse. . . 

Dinner's over x2
We are stuffed x2
What a great Thanksgiving x2
Yum, yum, yum x2

FLANNEL RHYME

4 Baby Owls Learning to Say "Who"

This rhyme comes from Storytime In The Stacks. Click here to read about the fun interactive rhyme. 

5 Kites

We did this one at the very end, after our scarf songs. In the poem, when the wind blows hard, the kids waved their scarves in the air and when the wind blows hard, they make wind noises. 

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 yellow kite off to the clouds.

How I tied this rhyme in with the November theme was the wind. In November it may feel windier because the air is cold but March is actually said to be the windiest month. I had them guess which month was the windiest. 

SCARF SONGS

Once I Was A Seed

Once I was a seed and I was small, small, small. (hide scarf in fist)
I grew into a tree and now I'm tall, tall, tall. (pull scarf vertically out of fist)
My branches sway in the breeze so soft. (wave in air)
And when it's autumn all my leaves fall off! (toss into air)

Autumn Leaves Are Falling Down (tune of London Bridge)

Autumn leaves are falling down (flutter scarf down)
falling down, falling down
Autumn leaves are falling down
All around the town.

Additional verses . . .

The wind will blow them round and round ( make circle in air with scarf)
Take a rake and rake them up (pretend scarf is a rake)
Now let's jump into a pile (jump and throw scarf in air)

 

 

Reading book dedications is one of my favorite things to do with our library books! 

Unlike my first 20 book dedications, there may be some books from the adult fiction section in this collection- not just Young Adult and Juvenile Fiction. A couple are e-book screen shots and will look different. 

If you missed the first post, My Top 20 Children and Yound Adult Book Dedications, click here!

1. Truly, Madly, Deadly by Hannah Jayne

2. Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

 3. The Bronzed Beasts by Roshani Chokshi

 

4. Warrior of the Wild by Tricia Levenseller

5. A Lesson In Vengeance by Victoria Lee

12. Black Bird, Blue Road by Sofiya Pasternack

 

13. Oh shoot. . . I didn't record the title for this book. It's one of the Brotherband Chronicle books 

 

14.Foxglove by Adalyn Grace

15.  I Don't Want To Be Big by Dev Petty

16. Plot Twist by Bethany Turner

17. Strangers Assume My Girlfriend Is My Nurse by Shane Burcaw

18. The Human Kaboom by Adam Rubin

 19. The Day The Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt (Look for the lone single sentence in lower half)

20. The Obsession by Jessie Squanto

SONG: We Eat Turkey  (tune: Frere Jacques)

We eat turkey x2
Oh so good x2
Always on Thanksgiving x2
Yum, yum, yum x2

last verse. . . 

Dinner's over x2
We are stuffed x2
What a great Thanksgiving x2
Yum, yum, yum x2

The story time group has been singing this one since Halloween so they knew it well. For this song, I printed off 7 foods that are popular for Thanksgiving dinner. They are magnetic. The way we would sing this song is . . .  the paper foods would be mixed into a hat. We would take turns letting kids grab a food from the hat, identify it out loud, put it on the board and then we'd sing a verse about it. 

BEAN BAG SONG: There's A Turkey On My Head

There's a turkey in the air, in the air x2
There's a turkey in the air, now he's flying in my hair
There's a turkey in the air, in the air

There's a turkey on my leg on my leg x2
There's a turkey on my leg and he is pretty big
There's a turkey on my leg, on my leg

There's a turkey on my hand, on my hand x2
There's a turkey on my hand but now he is my friend
There's a turkey on my hand, on my hand

We pretended that bean bags were turkeys and balanced them on our heads, legs and hands. This was a monthly song (a version of it) for the baby group 2 months ago so it helped that that group knew this one well.

SCARF SONG: Autumn Leaves Are Falling Down (tune: London Bridge)

Autumn leaves are falling down (throw scarf in air and flutter down)
Falling down, falling down
Autumn leaves are falling down
All around the town.

The wind will blow them round and round (twirl scarf in circular motion)
Round and round, round and round
The wind will blow them round and round
All around the town.

Take a rake and rake them up (pretend to use scarf as a rake)
Rake them up, rake them up
Take a rake and rake them up
All around the town.

Now let's jump into the pile (throw in air and jump)
Into the pile, into the pile
Now let's jump into the pile
All around the town. 

One of the unmentioned things we did was practice our turkey gobbling. I used an ipad and we watched 2 youtube videos of turkeys in the wild making gobble sounds. 

Story time was followed by a turkey scavenger hunt.

 Use these free printable files to create your own Turkey Scavenger Hunt. The turkey images used were found using a quick google search. 

 Yall. I am SO disappointed. 

I forgot to take pictures of my tabletop activities for Halloween!!!

Interactive Bulletin Board

The concept for this was: To prevent a vampire from rising, an old slavic tradition was to plant a rosebush over the grave. 

Kids colored roses, cut them out and placed them in the pocket for me to staple onto the board.

UN-PHOTOGRAPHED ACTIVITY

Dracula's Coffin 

This was a cardboard coffin with a bat slit cut out. The object of this activity was to write something that scares you and put it inside the coffin. 

Dracula's Castle Coloring Page

The idea for this came from Pinterest but required me to make my own template. This is what I came up with. Dracula is an image I found on google, the others are shapes made in Publisher. 

Here is a slightly different haunted castle.

Unfortunately there are no pictures of what this castle is supposed to look like but here is what you do . . . 

1. Color it
2. Cut it out
3. Fold along the vertical lines
4. Arrange the folds so the castle stands up on its own. 

 is October 16th every year, according to Thereisadayforthat.com.  Naming quirky looking cats is a fun and easy way to celebrate!

My inbox receives a steady stream of FANTASTIC educator guides from various publishers. To share this information, I made a display containing books and their accompanying guides. 

These guides were printed off, stapled together and slide inside books to be checked out. This display was very popular but a handful of books lingered quite a while before being eventually being re-shelved without circulation.

In fact, the materials in my pictures are some of the ones that were re-shelved. I should have taken a pictures sooner!!

Most were creative non-fiction titles which are my FAVORITES!! Being able to put those on display always feels good.

I will try to return to this post with links to these guides. 

Talk Like A Pirate Day is every year on September 19th. For this year, I changed my interactive bulletin board to ask library users what their pirate name would be. 

This is the generator I came up to find your pirate name. It includes my dads childhood nickname for me on the right side - I won't disclose what name that is. 

Unbeknownst to me, my coworker had a similar chart already made up from several years ago. I threw
both signs on the board and let the kids decide which chart/name they wanted to write on a skull to be attached to the board. 

Here's a close up of the 2 as they were on the board . . .

My name would either be Swashbuckler Kidd or Rotten Navigator. What would yours be?

Favorites from this list include . . .

Matched by Ally Condie

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Amid Stars and Darkness by Chani Lynn Feener

The Selection by Keira Cass.

If you also are a fan of The Selection, then you might enjoy The Princess Trials by Cordelia K Castel. I've not read that series yet but based on the description, they sound similar. Everneath by Brodi Ashton is now on my TBR list.

 

During our summer book club meetings, we had a wide range of attendees. Some kiddos could read, some could not. 

For our second meeting, I needed an activity that everyone could enjoy and one of the older kids had the idea to play Bad Kitty Bingo. That was the PERFECT idea!! 

Here you will find the materials I made for this to happen. 

BINGO SHEETS

I made 50 different Bingo sheets for this game in anticipation that they might want to change their sheets at some point. 

Besides, it's better to have too many than not enough!

Click here for my Bingo Sheets PDF.

BINGO ANSWERS

I'm not sure what these are called when they're not balls. Bingo Folds? 

There are 47 different images that were used in the Bad Kitty Bingo Sheets. These are the larger versions of those images. 

For our game, I cut out each individual picture and folded it up. It was placed inside a fish bowl. 

As each image was drawn, kids marked it off their board no matter what column it was in. 

Click here for my Bingo Answers. 

How We Played

Our prize table was filled with books and an assortment of other goodies we had acquired. 

Each person was allowed to Bingo twice for a prize. Once they bingo-ed, they could come up and choose an item from the table to keep. 

The rule was that they had to at least choose 1 book.

 

This idea was not original but that doesn't diminish from the straight forward and simplistic message. 

 

If you're looking for a quick and easy book related slogan for your bulletin board, this is it!