Month: June 2010

Kids Art: Whales

“Kids Art” was a program created to pair a book with a larger art project. The library already hosts a monthly craft program for grades 1-6, but our little kids were not getting much art — other than my storytime attempts. Thus, “Kids Art.”

This month’s Kids Art was inspired by “Alistair and Kip’s Great Adventure” by John Segal. (And a pretty awesome whale kit from Oriental Trading.)

This is a simple story, but I particularly chose it for the part that the whale plays in the story — he saves the day! The best part about this story/art pairing was that I had a kid who announced the connection between the two at art project. He proudly proclaimed, “It’s a WHALE. Like in the STORY.”

A quick song before craft:

“Baby Beluga”

Baby beluga in the deep blue sea,
Swim so wild and you swim so free.
Heaven above and the sea below,
And a little white whale on the go.

Baby beluga, baby beluga,
Is the water warm? Is your mama home,
With you so happy?

Way down yonder where the dolphins play,
Where you dive and splash all day,
Waves roll in and the waves roll out.
See the water squirting out of your spout.

Baby beluga, oh, baby beluga,
Sing your little song, sing for all your friends.
We like to hear you.

Baby beluga in the deep blue sea,
Swim so wild and you swim so free.
Heaven above and the sea below,
And a little white whale on the go.
You’re just a little white whale on the go.

Craft time!

I paired the whale craft kit from Oriental Trading with a simple Saran Wrap painting idea. The kit was a hanger craft originally, but the whale did not hang nicely, so I had the kids glue the whale onto a piece of painting paper after we had painted the ocean with a piece of crumpled up Saran Wrap. The kids glued their whale pieces together and while everything dried…we broke out our brand-new parachute.

I recycled a super simple game from another program for grade-school kids. I had my teen volunteers cut out foam fish from different colors. And while the rest of the kids shook the parachute, I called a kid by name to “dive under” and find a certain color fish. This is a great game, not only for color recognition, but because the kids laughed the whole way through it.

After the parachute, we settled down for “Rub-a-Dub-Sub” by Linda Ashman.

Once we were all done, kids had the option of taking their craft or leaving it to dry (we did have quite a few that needed more time to dry!), and the program was done.

June 22, 2010 4 Comments Short URL, , Special Programming

Fish!

Our theme for summer reading this year is “Make a Splash,” so we’ll be doing water-based storytimes for the next seven weeks. This week’s theme was easy — fish!

We started off with one of my favorite books — “Hooray for Fish!” by Lucy Cousins.

The children loved looking at all of Little Fish’s friends. We had a lot of side chatter during this book — “That’s MY favorite fish! The stripey one, Miss Katie!” — but no one lost interest! When we got to the “How many can you see?” spread, we had several little ones just start counting out loud, so we took a break and counted together which was an excellent practice for our next book…”Fish, Swish, Splash, Dash” by Suse MacDonald!

I absolutely love this book — the counting is told in a cut-out format where one fish turns into two fish, and so on. Then, we you reach the end of the book, you turn the book upside down and count down from ten. You can turn the book rightside up again at the end and start over if you want to. I think if the kids were given the option, we would spend all of storytime reading just this book. But, we did move on to our flannelboard:

Flannelboard: “Five Little Fishes”
Five little fish swimming by the shore
One got caught then there were four
Four little fish swimming in the sea
One got caught then there were three
Three little fish swimming in the blue
One got caught then there were two
Two little fish swimming in the sun
One got caught then there was one
One little fish swimming straight for home
Decided he would never roam

I am trying to break out of my comfort zone by using more puppets. We sang this song with Pinkie the Fish. (The kids pretended to have their own fishes, but I should have had the foresight to make popsicle stick fish or something.)

Did You Ever See a Fishy? (Tune of “Did You Ever See a Lassie?”)
Did you ever see a fishy, a fishy, a fishy
Did you ever see a fishy, swim this way and that?
Swim this way and that way, and that way and this way?
Did you ever see a fishy, swim this way and that?

We settled back down with our next book: “Big Fish, Little Fish” by Ed Heck.

I used this book several times over the course of the summer and each time it was very popular with my storytimes and group tours. It’s such a short, simple story that really works wonderfully. Next up, an action song!

“One, Two, Three, Four, Five”
One, two, three, four, five, (hold up fingers one by one, while counting)
Once I caught a fish alive. (put hands together and wiggle like a fish)
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, (hold up fingers one by one, while counting)
Then I threw it back again. (make throwing motion)
Why did you let it go? (hold hands out asking why)
Because it bit my finger so. (shake hand, as if hurt)
Which finger did it bite? (hold hands out asking why)
This little finger on my right. (wiggle pinky finger)

And we closed our storytime with “Fidgety Fish” by Ruth Galloway.

Our craft was very simple this week — fish scratch art! You can either make your own (most online craft stores sell “Magic Color” paper) and then you can die-cut your own shapes, or you can buy the kit online.

June 17, 2010 4 Comments Short URL, Family Storytime

Summer!

Seasons are an easy go-to theme, especially when you live in Chicago and the area has definite seasons! Our welcome song for this cycle is “Mr. Sun” and we’re still singing our “ABCs” for our closing song.

Started off storytime with “Mouse’s First Summer” by Lauren Thompson.

I really love the Mouse series — these are great books to use in introducing a season. Simple, bright illustrations and really adorable characters in Mouse and Minka. And even though the books are very formulaic, the kids are always excited to shoot “Hooray” with Mouse at the end.

Next, we read “It’s Summer” by Jimmy Pickering.

This is another series that has an installment for each season. We have another pair of cute characters here — Sally and her dog — and follow them as they explore the differences between the seasons in rhymes.

Afterwards, we needed to get up and shake around a bit, so we did our action rhyme:

Action Rhyme: “Swimming”
Swimming in the water cool and bright (pretend to swim)
I kick my feet with all my might (kick feet)
And when I’m tired I turn and float (spin and hold arms out)
Pretending that I’m a boat
I like to hold my breath and dive (pretend to take breath and dive)
I swim beneath the water and count to five (count to five)
Wow! What a dive!
Credit — Hummingbird Educational Resources

And then listened to our flannelboard: Ice Cream Colors (Credit: Step By Step).

Next up, “Summer Wonders” by Bob Raczka.

I adore this season series — bright colors, easy rhymes — and my favorite part is that there is always a vertical spread in each book. The kids are always really excited when I suddenly turn the book around on them. We have this whole series in our storytime collection, always ready to read.

Song: Summer’s Here (Tune: Frere Jacques)
Days are longer, sunshine’s stronger.
Summer’s here! Summer’s here!
Let’s jump through the sprinkler, let’s make lemonade
Summer’s here! Summer’s here!
Credit — Summer Preschool Lesson Plan

And we finished up the storytime by reading “Playground Day” by Jennifer J. Merz.

I really wanted to close the storytime with something that every kid could do over the summer. We have some awesome playgrounds around here and I hope that this book inspired parents to take their kids. Also, this one was definitely a winner — it’s a guessing animals book! As the girl plays on the various equipment, readers are invited to guess what animal she is acting like. Guessing animals is always a crowd pleaser.

For craft, we went with a pre-made kit from Oriental Trading: Tropical Visor Craft.

As for prep to make this one storytime appropriate, I punched out the foam pieces, pre-assembled the sun (base, face, and glasses) and decided to use glue dots instead of glue. This was our second time using glue dots, so my parents knew what was going on and I will definitely continue to use this product.

(Also, the recommended age on Oriental Trading has changed to 8+ since I ordered this kit. I really think that it works fine as a preschool craft. Some parents insisted that their kids make the scene exactly as the picture shows — but some of the cuter crafts were the ones where the kids had more free rein. And just so you know — this craft was entirely made of foam.)

June 17, 2010 3 Comments Short URL, Family Storytime

Bubble Party

This was an insane program that I did over the summer for 3-year-olds to 7-year-olds. I had twenty-three kids hopping around, and to make matters more complicated — I needed our bigger programming room for space, but also needed our smaller programming room for painting! (I’ll show you how I solved this with ease!)

First off, I read the book “Bubble Trouble” by Margaret Mahy.

This is a pretty long book to read about a baby who accidentally gets trapped in a bubble. And I definitely recommend practicing this one *several* times because there are a lot of tongue-twisty areas. But! The kids loved this story. We had massive amounts of giggling throughout its pages.

A couple of quick songs before launching into the bulk of the program: bubbles!

“My Bubbles” (Tune: “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean”)
My bubbles flew over the ocean,
My bubbles flew over the sea,
My bubbles flew over the rainbow,
Oh come back, my bubbles, to me.
Come back, come back, oh come back my bubbles to me!

“Big Bubble” (Tune: “Do You Know the Muffin Man?”)
Can you blow a big bubble?
A big bubble, a big bubble?
Can you blow a big bubble,
With your bubble wand?

Credit for both: Bubble Theme – Step by Step

And then the kids played some quick games:

Bubble Dance – A game where the goal is to simply pop bubbles, not letting the bubbles hit the ground. I played a Dora CD while the children played the game which made it infinitely better. We have a bubble machine, and I literally just let it go, set up on a table. The kids were *thrilled* to be able to pop them to their heart’s content.

Bubble Bounce – A different kind of bubble. You throw balloons into the air and have the children keep the “bubbles” afloat. Super simple, I left the CD playing while we played this one too.

Bubble Race – This game can turn into a disaster very quickly if you let it. We purchased some giant bubble wands and let the kids run with them. Instead of a disaster though, the kids practiced their turn-taking and we made lines. My older kids were great examples for my younger kids and this was actually pretty flawless in terms of execution.

Our transition between spaces was easily solved by grabbing a bubble set and leading the kids through the library on a bubble parade. Simple, and totally effective.

And the whole reason why we needed to move downstairs — our craft was Bubble Art. Add 2 teaspoons of paint to bubble solution. I had the kids blow bubbles onto white construction paper. Make sure to provide lots of different kinds of tools to make bubbles. I had straws, bubbles wands, bubble pipes, etc. set out and every color of the rainbow to use. This went great, and was again, super easy and effective.

This is a program that I would definitely consider doing again — especially because I didn’t take pictures amidst all the chaos!

June 16, 2010 3 Comments Short URL, Special Programming