Story Time Review

Merry Christmas!
The final week of our Story Time session is finished. We used the last class to talk about Reindeer and Christmas. We read Where's Prancer? by Syd Hoff, Jingle-Jingle by Nicola Smee, Millie in the Snow by Alexander Steffenmeier, Santa's Great Reindeer Chase by Vincent Borgeau, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer by Kristen Depken. Although these stories are not all about reindeer they had elements of reindeer like activities, so they worked well together. For instance, in Millie in the Snow, a cow likes to help deliver packages and in Jingle-Jingle the horse pulls a sleigh that looks very much like the one Santa would use. I had planned to use Stranger in the Woods by Carl Sams also but we ran out of time!

We recreated the fingerplay 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed but changed the words to say,
8 Little Reindeer pulling Santa's sled,

One fell off and bumped his head,

The Elves called Santa and Santa said,

 Can 7 Little Reindeer pull my sled?

I had some cut out reindeer figures and a Santa in a sleigh. As each reindeer fell down I took one off the board until it was just Santa left. Then at the end of the rhyme we declared, "Better call Rudolph!"

We did a flannel board activity with a picture of Rudolph and used the poem "Rudolph, Rudolph". In the poem Rudolph changes the color of his nose. So after each stanza I changed the color of his nose to match. We sang Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer, of course!

We made a reindeer ornament for the tree with some toilet paper tubes and some brown pipe cleaners for antlers. We glued on a couple of google eyes and a red pom pom for a nose. We used a piece of green yarn to make the hanger for the ornament.

Registration for our next session is January 15th!
Michele Schumann
Children's Librarian