Mother’s Day

http://spoonful.com/printables/printable-card-color-mothers-day

This week we celebrated Mother’s Day at storytime. Most of the books I found about Mother’s Day were too long so I chose books about being a mom.

Many of our picture books about Mom’s seem to also be about bedtime.

We finished with Mother’s Day cards and easy tissue paper flowers. The two oldest boys made the most flowers!

The kids really spent lots of time creating great things for the Moms.

Outline:
When animals get up in the morning they always say good day
(with puppets)

Hands are for clapping-Jim Gill

Book

Shake my sillies-Raffi

Knuckles knees-Jim Gill

Spin again-Jim Gill

Open shut them

Roly Poly

Book

Craft Time

Big Little StoryTime

This week we talked about size.
We read the large book version of In the Tall, Tall Grass by Denise Fleming but I also showed them the same book in a smaller size.

We also read A Bug, A Bear and a Boy by David McPhail, one of my all-time favorite authors & illustrators. I love the Boy, Dog and Frog books and have tried to figure out how to blow them up for storytime because they’re so small!

For a craft we made big and little bugs.
Lots of stickers and stamping fun!

Outline:

Talk about big and small

Read Big Book

Hands are for clapping: Jim Gill CD

Ups & Downs: Jim Gill

Thumbkin

5 little monkeys

Roly Poly

Talked about beginning to read books
Read McPhail book

Shake your sillies: Raffi

Knuckles Knees: Jim Gill

Silly Dance Contest

Craft Time

.

Storytime

After building things up in Paradise I’m now in the main branch in Oroville taking over Preschool storytimes and working towards a position as the County Children’s Librarian which will give me the opportunity to go to all the branches and help the children’s staff which I’m so excited for!

In the meantime I’ve been welcomed back, after working at this branch 3 yrs ago, by some storytimers from my previous babies love books storytime. Everyone seems to remember me and I’m so happy to see them growing up & still coming to storytime

This week we read/sang “There was a tree” by Rachel Isadora which is such a beautiful book. I wish I would’ve made a flannel for it!
I’m still going to make one and put it in my rotation.
I also wish I could’ve played the song for them to hear. This is where an IPad would’ve been handy as a reference to the song in a video on YouTube instead of buying the song on ITunes, which I want to do anyway but without an iPod dock its not worth it.

I’m really interested in using technology in Storytimes thanks to Cen Campbell at littleeLit.com.

Here’s the Storytime Outline

Opening: flannel cloud & sun, talked about if its cloudy or sunny and mentioned its also windy

Flannel: Three Green & Speckled Frogs
2 times since its only 3 frogs & not 5

Where is Thumbkin

Roly Poly

Book: It’s Spring (which also talked about the weather)

Movement & Music: Shake your Sillies by Raffi
Knuckles Knees by Jim Gill
Silly Dance Contest by Jim Gill

Open shut them (2 times I think)

Book: There was a tree ( which everyone quickly sang along to “and the green grass grew all around all around and the green grass grew all around)
This is still stuck in my head from Wednesday btw

Craft time: Snake mobiles or flower mobiles

I also left out the flannels for free play

Target Grant Wrap-up

I’ve finished the last of my preschool outreach family fun day visits and created 5 large resource kits filled with puppets, books and manipulatives chosen by the teachers. We also gave away 88 copies of Rosie’s Walk, 44 copies of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, 44 copies of Stone Soup, 40 copies of The Three Billy Goats Gruff and 40 copies of The Three Little Pigs. All with $2,000 from Target and $500 matching from donations. Now I need to get the kits cataloged with detailed notes of the items and make them available to all.
Here is my Pinterest link with all the photos from the project.
http://m.pinterest.com/susieserrano/preschool-outreach/

Pre-School Outreach Vista

It was another great Thursday for me! I went to Vista Pre-School and spent the day celebrating The Three Billy Goats Gruff with Mrs. Peggy and her staff.

I signed up parents and children who didn’t have a library card and gave out free copies of the book thanks to the grant from Target.

Other activities included Butte Baby Steps moon sand with flour, oil and glitter.

Children created their own bridge with their name trip trapping across.

Preschool Outreach

On Thursday I spent the day at Cedarwood Preschool and had such a wonderful time celebrating Stone Soup at their Family Fun event. With the Target grant I applied for we were able to give away 48 copies of Stone Soup and a resource kit for the teachers.

Families heard this story and participated in related activities.
They cut veggies for soup.

They made recipe books.

And did a potato relay.

I got a ton of ideas for next years Summer Reading Program “Reading is so Delicious”. Best of all hands down were seeing these fabulous teachers in action and meeting all the families. I really think this experience was one of the best!

Turkeys

Today we sang some turkey songs and made turkeys. (I will share those songs soon.) We have a Die-Cut machine so it’s easy to cut out our turkeys but difficult to find brown construction paper!
I gave the children white feathers first to color and then the turkey with a jumbo craft stick.
My friend and coworker Karen brought over colored feathers for the parents and children to write what they’re thankful for to post on her wall display.

With the older kids Karen made these.

She did paint the white paper cups ahead of time because she discovered they take an hour to dry with washable paint.
Turkey Songs from KidSparkz http://www.kidsparkz.com/preschoolsingsthanksgiving.html#.UKxcOL-9Kc0

Tune:This Old Man

Little turkeys walking by,
They can move from side to side,
With a wibble-wobble here and a wibble-wobble there-
They can wibble-wobble everywhere.
Little turkeys making sounds.
They can talk as they move around
With a gobble-gobble here and a gobble-gobble there,
They can gobble-gobble everywhere.

“If You’re Happy and You Know It”

Hello, Mr. Turkey how are you?
Hello, Mr. Turkey, how are you?
His feet go wobble, wobble
And his head goes Gobble, Gobble.
Hello, Mr. Turkey, how are you?