Spider Crawling Up Your Back... Storytime for 2s and 3s; 4s, 5s, and 6s

Today's storytime was brought to us by the letter B for Bugs! For some reason kids love bugs...I guess its a learned behavior to fear and be grossed out by them, so a bugs storytime tends to be pretty fun. And, it's pretty easy to pick out fun books to share.

I read:

I Love Bugs by Philemon Sturges

This was a nice, simple book, for the toddlers. The giggled when the baby sister ladybug crawled into the last page.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

 Always a crowd favorite. When I read this to the toddlers, and POPPED the egg open, one toddler shrieked with delight.

Creepy Crawly Calypso by Tony Langham

I wish I knew how the Creepy Crawly Calypso was sung...I mean, I'm sure I can find it on the internets, but I never think about it until I'm IN STORYTIME.

Bugs Galore by Peter Stein

I read this with the 4s, 5s, and 6s.  It was a fun rhyming story, and the kids were very interested in all the different bugs that were shown on the pages. It really was bugs galore.

Probably the highlight of storytime this week was the DANCING.  

Here is the handout for my BUGS STORYTIME

Off the handout we did:

• Hello Song
• Fuzzy Wuzzy Caterpillar
• Bug Song
• Five Little Ladybugs (with Flannel Board)
• It's Time to Say Good-Bye

Song and Dance Numbers:

• Itsy Bitsy Spider from Songs for Wiggleworms - the version I used included a great big hairy spider and a very quiet spider
• Butterfly from It's Toddler Time - we did a bit of an interpretive dance using our scarfs to twirl and float and fly like butterflies.
•  The Ticklebug from Hunk-Ta-Bunk-Ta-Wiggle - I didn't warn the kids that a ticklebug was involved in this song...I just started crawling my fingers up my legs and arms.  When the tickling got started, they were in a frenzy!   One little boy in my 4s, 5s, and 6s group laughed so hard he peed in his pants!

Stats:
Storytime for 2s and 3s: 22 children, 20 adults
Storytime for 4s, 5s, and 6s: 15 children, 13 adults

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

I ran out on my lunch break today to pick up a copy of Bitterblue (!!!) and while I was there I remembered that today was also the release date of the new Pete the Cat book! 

Now...not to brag or anything, but Eric Litwin IS COMING TO MY RHYTHM AND WORDS music and book festival in June!!!!!!!!  So now I'll have two books and my Pete the Cat plushie for him to sign.  Plus a tea towel.  I guess I'm a Pete fangirl.

Anyways, I really like the new book. I wish I had it last week for my numbers and counting storytime!  It's a good story for counting down and I can also see it being used really easily as a flannel while I'm reading it.  Now, to get someone to make me a Pete flannel....

Storytime for Babies, May 1st

Today at storytime we read two of my least favorite books in our storytime colletion:

Jamberry

and

Hands Hands Fingers Thumb

It's not that these are bad books - they're good books with fun beats to find a rhythm and pat along to.  I just find its hard to share them with babies, especially when I have a group as large as I did today.

Again, I had very high attendance with 37 babies and 31 adults.

We used this handout and did almost all the songs on the sheet.  For our songs today we did:
1, 2, 3, Whee
Wiggle Your Fingers
Ladies Ride
Shake My Sillies Out

Movies for Kids (April 2012)

I show movies based on picture books once a month at the end of the month.  We get the Weston Woods/Scholastic DVD's that have Public Performance Licensees since we do not have a site license.  

Today I showed:

Boomer Goes to School

Boomer's Big Day

Giggle, Giggle, Quack

Dooby Dooby Moo

Duck for President

I thought the Boomer movies were a little boring, which is why I switched to the Cronin books.  Giggle Giggle Quack got the biggest laughs from the kids, followed by Dooby Dooby Moo.

Numbers and Counting! Storytime for 2s and 3s; 4s-6s

Today's storytime theme was brought to us by the letter N for number and the numbers 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and....you get the idea.

I'm always a little apprehensive about doing concept storytimes, just because it seems so simplistic, but they always tend to be big hits.  Today was no exception.

First things first, my handout for this week - Storytime Handout

Storytime for 2s and 3s 

Books Shared:
Hootenanny! A Festive Counting Book

 This was a fun read - I had a few of the kids saying HOOTenanny with me throughout the book

Let's Count Goats

This was great to count along with, and also to point out the silly things the goats were doing, like eating the airplanes!


Five Green and Speckled Frogs

 I love sharing this book.  I always have the kids say YUM YUM with me and rub their bellies when the frogs eat their delicious bugs.

Storytime for 4s, 5s, and 6s

The only difference between the two storytimes was essentially the addition of a fourth book.  We also did less songs, since we got started later and this is my listener group.

Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree

 It's always fun to SNAP like a crocodile. Luckily none of the monkey's were harmed in the telling of this story.

Fingerplays and Songs shared:

Five Little Monkeys (handout)
Five in the Bed (handout)
Number Fun! (handout)
1, 2, 3, Whee! (song)
Six Little Ducks (song)
Five Green and Speckled Frogs (song)
Jumping and Counting (song)

If you've never used Jumping and Counting by Jim Gill before, I highly recommend it. So much fun!

Stats for today:
Storytime for 2s and 3s: 22 children, 17 adults
Storytime for 4s, 5s, and 6s: 7 children, 4 adults

Storytime for Babies, April 24

39 babies, a new record!  Seriously, I'm not really sure where all these new babies are coming from.  Word of mouth I suppose. For the size of the group, I think the storytimes are actually fairly chaos free.

Books:

Off We Go!

Piggies

We did well with Off We Go, but by the time we got to Piggies, the babies seemed to have had enough with paying attention to books. Luckily its super short, so it was painless.  I relied pretty heavily on music today.

Rhymes and Fingerplays shared:
Hello Song
Open Them, Shut Them
Cuckoo Clock
Rain is Falling Down
High-ho
It's Time to Say Goodbye

Songs shared:
Wiggle Your Fingers
Ladies Ride
Shakin' Shakin' (with shakers)
1, 2, 3, Whee! (with shakers)

Planting a Garden! Storytime for 2s and 3s / Storytime for 4s, 5s, and 6s

Today we read stories about gardens!  Our letter of the day was G - g for goat, g for garden, g for grapes, g for grandpa and grandma.  I need a lot of help when we come up with words for our letters of the day. I'm a really bad scrabble player. :D

We always start off with our Hello Song.  I use the same hello song for all my storytimes and everyone gets really involved singing it. 

Hello Song
This is the way we wave hello
Wave hello, wave hello
This is the way we wave hello
So early in the morning
…Clap hands
…Stomp feet
After we stomp our feet, I always ask the kids, what they want to do next.  The toddlers pretty much always want to do the same thing - we will spin around, then we'll jump up and down.  The older kids we'll get a little more variety.  Today we snapped our fingers and did jumping jacks.  Some days we might do a lot more activities but I think everyone was super excited to get on with the stories since I gave away our super special project for after the stories finished.

We read Muncha Muncha Muncha

The kids enjoyed shouting out if they thought the rabbits would be able to make it through each of the fences that the farmer built.  The story did get a little long for the toddlers, but I just paraphrased some of the longer pages and we were good to go.  The older kids got a kick out of discovering the bunnies in the basket.

Since we read the story about these pesky bunnies stealing all the farmers veggies (although we decided that the farmer had enough to share), we decided it was a good time to hop like bunnies. First we practiced to make sure we all could.  Then it was time to get our bunny hop on.


Next I read In My Garden pop up book- it's not a particularly inspired story, but let's be honest, we're just in it for the pop up story.

Time to sing!

WE ARE GARDENERS
Tune: Farmer in the Dell
We all plant the seeds, We all plant the seeds
High ho the Derry-o
We all plant the seeds
(Bend down to plant seeds)
The sun comes out to shine,
The sun comes out to shine
High ho the Derry-o
The sun comes out to shine
(Hold hands up in the air to be the sun)
The rain starts to fall, The rain starts to fall
High ho the Derry-o
The rain starts to fall
(Use fingers to simulate rain falling)
The seeds start to grow, The seeds start to grow
High ho the Derry-o
The seeds start to grow
(Raise hands higher and higher growth)
We all smell the flowers, We all smell the flowers
Heigh ho the derry-o
We all smell the flowers
(Sniff flowers extravagantly)

At this point, the toddlers were pretty much done with reading books. They were pretty squirrley and it was getting close to the 25 minute mark. I decided to do a flannel story (thanks Sarah of Read Rabbit Read!), based on the book, Counting in the Garden. 

The nice thing with this flannel is that I would have enough pieces basically no matter the size of the group - I cut out each bug or animal individually - 1 cat + 2 turtles + 3 dogs...+ 10 butterflys = lots of pieces.  But the kids love participating in the flannel stories and helping me tell a story, even if its basically a giant mess that makes no sense at all to adults.

With the older kids, I was able to squeeze in one more story with them - I read them part of a non-fiction book - Secrets of the Garden

This was a great book to share, it covers how the plants grow, what insects come to eat the plants, and what birds and animals come to eat the insects.  It's the food chain, right in the kids' backyard!  This was the perfect introduction to our activity, planting a bean seed!

I picked up peat pots

and potting soil

and the Farming Librarian (my lovely co-worker) brought in green bean seeds.

First things first, we got our Popsicle sticks and markers, and colored those.  We had to know what we planted and where it was planted, right?  So we colored and colored.  When our sticks were ready, now it was planting time.  I filled each pot up with soil and instructed each child to make a small hole for the seed.  Then I let them each drop their seed in the hole and cover it with dirt.  I had them stick their sticks in the side of their containers, with instructions to put their pots on a very sunny windowsill and keep it nice and moist.  Then, after it starts to grow and it gets nice outside - maybe towards the end of May, then can plant the entire thing, pot and all, outside.  It should grow all summer long and finally they'll be able to pick the beans and eat them!

I had such a great day with the kids - everyone was so happy and joyful. They listened well, participated, and were so excited to take something home.

Numbers for today:

Storytime for 2s and 3s: 21 children, 17 adults
Storytime for 4s, 5s, and 6s: 9 children, 9 adults

You can find the rest of the songs and rhymes that I didn't end up using here on my handout.

Storytime for Babies, April 17 2012

Todays storytime was brought to us by the letter F for fun!  Seriously, it was a great session.  I used a bunch of new rhymes and they all worked so well!  This is a first for me, so I'm totally stoked about it.


I had another huge group - about 36 babies and 30 caregivers.  My youngest baby was just a week old! (mom was a regular with older sister - I think she wanted to stick to her routine)


Here's how we rolled:


1. Reminder to caregivers to save socializing to playtime. And to tell babies there's no crying in storytime ;)


2. Hello Song
This is the way we wave hello
Wave hello, wave hello
This is the way we wave hello
So early in the morning
…Clap hands
…Stomp feet
…Tickle tummy

3. Fingerplay

Open Them, Shut Them

Open them, shut them,
Open them, shut them,
Give a little clap clap clap.
Open them, shut them, open them, shut them,
Lay them in your lap lap lap.

Creepy crawly, creepy crawly,
Right up to your chin chin chin.
Open up your little mouth,
But do not let them in!

4. Song

1, 2, 3, Whee!

follows with 1,2,3 hug, then kiss, then tickle

5. Book

Baby Cakes

6. Activity
This is the absolute favorite activity of my group - I think they'd riot if I didn't do it.
Cuckoo clock
(swing baby from side to side)
Tick-tock, tick-tock, I’m a little cuckoo clock.
Tick-tock, tick-tock,
Now I’m striking one o’clock. (lift baby up)
   Cuckoo!
(Repeat for two and three o’clock)

7. Song
Wiggle Your Fingers by Peter Allard (Sing it! Say it! Stamp it! Sway it! vol 2)


8. Activity
Boom Bang!
Boom, bang, boom, bang!
(clap hands like cymbols)
Rumpety, lumpety, bump!
(drum thighs like a drum)
Zoom, zam, zoom, zam!
(slide hands back and forth)
Clippety, clappety, clump!
(stomp on the floor)

 9. Book
Mama Mama/Papa Papa

 10. Bouncing Rhyme

High – ho     

(tune of: “Farmer in the Dell”)

A bouncing we will go, a bouncing we will go,

High-ho the dairy oh, a bouncing we will go.

A stretching we will go, a stretching we will go,

High-ho the dairy oh, a stretching we will go.

A patting we will go, a patting we will go,

High-ho the dairy oh, a patting we will go.

A tickling we will go, a tickling we will go,

High-ho the dairy oh, a tickling we will go.

11. Song

Ladies Ride by Wiggleworms

12. ActivityAirplanes

Airplanes fly in the sky, zoom zoom!

(zoom hand around)

Airplanes fly in the sky, zoom zoom!

(zoom hand around)

Round and round the airplanes go

(arm circles around)

Flying high, flying low

(arm circles up high, then down low)

Shhh... I think I hear one

(finger to lips, then cup ear)

ZOOM! (zoom arm from one side to the other)

13. Fingerplay

Rain is Falling Down

Rain is falling down, splash!
Rain is falling down, splash!
Pitter, patter, pitter, patter.
Rain is falling down, splash!

Sun is peeking out, peek-a-boo!
Sun is peeking out, peek-a-boo!
Peeking here, peeking there,
Sun is peeking out, peek-a-boo!

14. Shaker Song

Shakin' Shakin'- Kindermusik

15. Goodbye Song
It’s Time to Say Goodbye
Oh, it’s time to say goodbye to our friends,
Oh, it’s time to say goodbye to our friends.
Oh, it’s time to say goodbye,
Make a smile and wink an eye…
It’s time to say goodbye to our friends

16. PLAYTIME!

New Material:

Song - Wiggle Your Fingers

Activity - Boom Bang

Activity - Airplanes

Fingerplay - Rain is Falling Down

All the new material was very well recieved and everyone followed along quite easily.  People especially seemed to enjoy the Wiggle Your Fingers song and Boom Bang. 


You can find the other songs, rhymes and fingerplays that I didn't use today on my handout here.

About my Library and Programming

I work for a mid-sized suburban library system.  The branch I work has a core service area of approx. 60k residents, plus a thousands of residents from the next city over which is part of another county system.

The city is probably like many older suburbs across the US - there is a significant population that is growing older plus a growing population of young families, including new immigrants.

I am the only children's librarian at our busy branch.  Which works out, since we also only have one adult services librarian and one teen librarian (although I suppose since the powers that be combined teen and children's, we're both "Youth Services" librarians now).  I'm responsible for all programming for children ages 0-12(ish).  I say 12(ish) because if I find a program that might go over 12, I'll still run it, even though it encroaches on my co-workers territory. We're cool like that.

I essentially run on two schedules: September - May and June - August.  September - May I primarily focus on storytimes for 0-6, plus special programs for school breaks and occasional evening or weekend programs.  During the summer I focus on Storytime for Babies plus Summer Reading Programs, which is mostly performers, buts is occasionally special programs created by yours truly.

Let's break it down:

Yearly Schedule
September 2011 - May 2012

Storytime for Babies (every Tuesday, except December and last 2 weeks in May and August)
Stories, songs, bounces and playtime make this storytime perfect for children newborn to 24 months and their caregiver. All children must be accompanied by an adult. Storytimes generally last 45 minutes.

Storytime for 2s & 3s (every Wednesday, Sept - May, except December and last 2 weeks in May)
Stories, rhymes, songs and activities selected to entertain and develop early literacy skills in toddlers. All children must be accompanied by an adult. Storytimes generally last 30 minutes.

Storytime for 4s, 5s, & 6s (every Wednesday, Sept - May, except December and last 2 weeks in May)
Books, music and movement to help build language and listening skills and preschoolers. All children must be accompanied by an adult. Storytimes generally last 30 minutes.

Storytime for All Ages (not currently in schedule)
Stories and activities ideal for mixed age groups such as childcare groups and families. All children must be accompanied by an adult. Storytimes generally last 30 minutes.

Legos and Duplos at the Library (usually once a month, Monday evenings)

Get your child’s imagination working by exploring the many things they can create with Legos.

Family Game Night (occasionally throughout the year, Monday evenings or daytime during SRP)

Bring the whole family for a fun night of board games.

Movies for Kids (September - May, last Friday of the month)

Enjoy fun children's books in movie format.

Starting next September, I'm going to do two back to back Family storytimes instead of a toddler and pre-school.  I was essentially doing the same storytime since families just came to whichever time was most convenient for them, regardless of the age of their children, which I am totally fine with. I'm also going to move the Movies for Kids to the last Wednesday of each month, to give myself a little storytime break to recharge and to keep on the schedule (plus boost my attendance for movie days).  I'm already planning next fall, since we have to have the schedule in by mid-May for proofing and printing.  More on that later!

June - August 2012

I drop regular storytimes for toddlers and pre-k in the summer, since my schedule is jam packed with SRP performers.  I continue with baby storytimes since there's really no other alternative for babies (plus, it's my favorite program to do!)

The schedule for summer follows:

Monday - 1:30 pm Program

Tuesday - 10:15 am Storytime for Babies

Wednesday - 10: 30 am Program

I wanted to make sure to have a schedule so when families knew they can show up at the library on Mondays and Wednesdays at those times and find a program.  The only program that doesn't fit is a last minute addition from our professional baseball teams mascot. 

Program Scheduling

In the last few years, we've moved to a system wide calendar publication for programming, meaning we have to submit our programs months in advance.  We have been working on a quarterly schedule - September - Nov, Dec - Feb, Mar - May, Jun - Aug.  This September we are switching to a trimester schedule which will make a lot more sense, but will give us an even greater length of advance planning time - for instance, for the September through December program guide we have to have all programs submitted by the middle of May.  Starting in September, our new program guides will be released for September through December, January through May and June through August.