Hippity Hop to Story Time!

This week we read about rabbits at Story Time. Our books were Big Bunny by Betsy Gail Rand, The Black Rabbit by Philippa Leathers, Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Rosenthal, Home for a Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown, Little White Rabbit by Kevin Henkes, The Terrible Plop by Ursula Dubosarsky, and Oh So, Tiny Bunny by David Kirk. I used the song  Here is a Bunny by Carole Peterson from her CD Season Sings and Hop like a Bunny from the CD Toddlers on Parade. 

We did a fun activity with the flannel board. I drew some unusual carrots on 2x2 cards. Carrots that were squares or ovals or hexagons. Some that were green and yellow and purple too! Then I taped the carrots to the flannel board and taped some brown construction paper strips over the top to make dirt. Just the tops were sticking out. I had each child come up one at a time and pick a carrot, they showed what kind of carrot they got and then fed the carrot to a hungry bunny. The bunny I made with an empty #10 can. I taped a photo copy on the top of a rabbit face, with a whole cut out for the mouth. The children just slid the carrots through the hole into the can. They loved this activity. It was fun to tell them about real purple carrots, one mom said that they had even grown purple carrots in their garden last summer. 


For our craft we took a plain white paper plate and glued on some white rabbit ears. We used a pink pom pom for his nose and some cotton balls for his puffy cheeks. We glued on some googly eyes and drew a mouth and little tongue. Some children drew on whiskers as well. We could have also used pipe cleaners for whiskers but our Walmart was out of them the day I went shopping for supplies and I didn't have time to drive anywhere else to get them. 

Our take home pages included some bunny finger puppets to color and cut out and the finger rhyme 5 Little Bunnies.

Next week: Eggs, both the regular kind and the Easter kind
Michele Schumann, Children's Librarian

Storytime Review

Attack of the Easter Bunnies!

Just kidding. We had fun this week at Story Time talking about bunnies and Easter. We read Bunny Days by Tao Nyeu, I Need an Easter Egg by Harriet Ziefert, Bunny Bunny by Kirsten Hall, The Bunnies Picnic by Lezlie Evans, What's the Matter Bunny Blue by Nicola Smee and my personal favorite, The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown. I am sometimes amazed by the classics by Brown, they are so timeless in their style and stories that even decades after they were first published children still respond well to them. The children and I discussed what other things we could runaway and become like the bunny in the story. Some good ones were a sheep, and mother could be a shepard, an astronaut and mother could become a rocketship, a monster and mother could become a superhero. The best suggestion came from 5 year old Trey, he said a germ and mother could become soap.

We talked about what rabbits eat and showed pictures of some foods they would eat like carrots, celery and radishes. Some pictures of things they would not eat like cookies, soda pop and fish. Some of the pictures were hard to decide, most of the children didn't connect pumpkins with food/vegetables only with Jack-o-lanterns. Only a few knew what the picture of a mango was and only one knew what the whole pineapple was. The picture of the coconut was surprising since some of the children knew what it was but we decided that a rabbit wouldn't be able to eat it unless someone broke it open for them. Interesting insights from 4 year olds.

We pulled out the parachute and played "Make the bunny hop" with a stuffed toy rabbit and then we made some bunny masks from my new die-cut mask making set. This was our final Story Time for the session.

Next session will be the summer program for 3-6 year olds. This year the theme will be One World, Many Stories. Registeration begins June 7th.

Michele, Children's Librarian