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

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

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.

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

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.

 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. 

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

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

• 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. 

 Tis the Season to be reading!

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 . . .

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

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. 

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:

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The Fabled Stables by Jonathan Auxier

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Ana & Andrew by Christine Platt

Published: December 2018

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Charlie & Mouse by Jonathan Auxier

Published: April 2019

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Our Friend Hedgehog: The Story of Us by Lauren Castillo

Published: May 2020

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Kondo & Kezumi by David Goodner

Published: October 2020

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The Princess In Black by Shannon & Dean Hale

Published: April 2015

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Doggo and Pupper by Katherine Applegate

Published: March 2021

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Mercy Watson by Kate DiCamillo

Published: December 2009

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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: