Story Time Review

Welcome to Story Time!

This week we began our new session of our Story time classes. The first thing that I want to say is welcome to any new readers of our blog. I sent a note home with the parents to see if we could get some of them to friend us on facebook or join us here.  Like this post so we know that you are reading.

The first week of each session I put out play dough. When the kids arrive they can play and have time to settle in. Almost everybody likes to play with play dough and the kids don't need any instructions. My heartfelt thanks to mom Shannon Barton who volunteered to clean the tables off after our play dough time! Every week we will have a different activity to do while everyone arrives.

We started our session with a lesson on being silly. We read Silly Sally by Audry Wood and Clap your Hands by Lorinda Bryan Cauley with our Jr. Story time kids. Then for our older classes we added The 2 Sillies by Mary Ann Hoberman, and The Runaway Beard by David Schiller. I also used two poems from Jack Prelutsky's book Be Glad your Nose is on your Face. For the title poem I used a simple prop of a picture of a nose on a stick. As I read the poem I moved the nose to each part of the body that the poem references. Between my toes, on top of my head and in my ear. After the poem we talked about more places that you wouldn't want your nose to be, on your elbow, on your knee or on your bottom! For the poem called Willie Ate a Worm I used a paper cup prop. I cut a tiny slit into the bottom of the cup and threaded in a two foot piece of pink plastic lace, that was Willie's mouth and the worm. I added some sticker eyes. Then as I read the poem and Willie slurped up the worm, I pulled the lace into the cup until the worm disappeared.

We used the CD Yummy Yummy by the Wiggles and danced and wiggled to the track Shake Your Sillies Out. I am always glad when the moms join us when we dance and sing! It is fun for the kids to see mom act silly and it makes me feel less like a performer.For our older classes we did another wiggle activity called Silly Willy, who is nice but very silly and he moves in a variety of silly ways. The kids follow along with the actions and by the end they are being very silly too. For our Jr. classes we did a variety of lap bounces and fingerplays and tickle rhymes. I am trying out some new rhymes this year so watch for a bigger variety than we have had in the past. This is a challenge for me to learn all of the new ones! I spent some of me time this summer researching rhymes that other libraries use and have quite a few. We also have a new good-bye song to switch off with our old one.

For our craft we made some silly hats. I cut slits in the center of a simple paper plate (see photo). The children decorated each resulting triangle with stickers, feathers, buttons and foam shapes and then folded the triangles up to create a hole in the center for their head to fit in. I have done these type of hats in Story time before but this time I must have purchased smaller paper plates because they didn't fit quite as well as they did last time. Something for me to watch for when purchasing paper plates next time. My favorite kid quote of the week was from a little girl who thought the hats looked more like crowns and told me that they were not hats but tiaras!

I sent home a couple of take home pages with shape recognition and number practice. They are fun to do together at home.

Next week: One Fish, Two Fish
Michele Schumann
Children's Librarian