Story Time Review

Wonderful Winter @ the Brigham City Library

We discussed playing in the snow this week in our Story Time classes. We read First Day of Winter by Denise Fleming, In the Snow, Who's been Here? by Lindsay Barrett George, Snow by Roy McKie and No Two Alike by Keith Baker.

I started the day with a big brown paper bag. We discussed things that you might need to go outside and play in the snow like gloves, a jacket or a scarf. I pulled each item out of the bag as we talked. We discussed what each item did. Keep your hands warm, or keeps you dry etc. We did several snow related finger plays and one flannel board activity with snowmen.

"Five little snowmen" flannel board activity, use 5 snowmen on the board. Remove one after each verse.
   Five little snowmen sitting by the door
   One hopped away and that left, four.
   Four little snowmen sitting by the tree
   One skipped away and that left, three.
   Three little snowmen sitting in the morning dew
   One danced away and that left, two.
   Two little snowmen having lots of fun
   One slid away and that left, one.
   One little snowman sitting in the sun
   Oh no! do you know what happened?
   He melted and that left none!

We danced along with the tune Hat, Jacket, Pants and Boots from the CD Season Sings! by Carole Peterson. We created some snowflake crowns for our craft. I cut strips of card stock 1 1/2" wide and stapled two together to make a strip long enough to go around the children's heads. Then we stapled three die cut snowflakes onto the headband. We added some silver jewels and other sparkly white beads. Then we covered the snowflakes with glue and added white glitter "snow" to each crown.  Messy but they turned out super pretty and fun. Lots of the glitter ended up on my clothes and in the kids hair, but that is part of the fun of glitter.

I sent home two take home pages. One practice writing sheet where the children duplicated the patterns shown and the other a story mat of a snowman picture. The picture included questions like "How many trees are in the picture?" or "Count all the mittens in the picture."

Next Week: Snowmen!
Michele Schumann, Children's Librarian

Story Time Review

It is now December and I think it should snow. I generally am not in favor of snow but it is nice at Christmastime. Since we were talking about Polar Bears today I was hoping that it would look more arctic outside, but alas the plants in the flower bed next to my front door are still green and looking pretty perky for the first week in December.

We read Bedtime for Little Bears! by David Bedford, Baby Polar by Yannick Murphy, Polar Bear Night by Lauren Thompson, My Little Polar Bear by Claudia Rueda and The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett. I was surprised when I asked the children if they knew the traditional story The Three Bears. A lot of them said that they didn't know that story. One girl even told me that I was silly because it's The Three Little Pigs! So instead of explaining to them that Jan Brett's story is based on this traditional tale, I just read it. "Really? They don't know that story?" I thought.  How can that be? These are children from families that obviously value reading and early child development. I want to say to parents "Hey get with it! Your child is lacking in some very basic areas of common knowledge!" But I digress.

We played the song Bears have Coats of Many Colors from the CD Bear Tunes by Brent Holmes. We talked about why different bears would be different colors. Briefly talking about camouflage and even the fact that a polar bear will hide his nose with his paw when he is hunting. I handed out some snowflakes cut from coffee filters and we used them to dance and create a snow storm. Since I had no real snow to use, I created paper snowballs and we had a pretend snowball fight. Finally, we created a polar bear face using a paper plate and some puffy shaving cream/Elmer's glue paint. We added a black nose, some cotton pad ears and a couple of google eyes. They turned out very cute but the "paint" takes a very long time to dry. I hope that no one dropped their polar bear in mom's back seat on the way home.

Next week:  Cookies & Gingerbread Men
Michele Schumann
Children's Librarian