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