African-American Culture & Diversity!

The Plan

Books

This Jazz Man by Karen Ehrhardt
Uh-Oh by Rachel Isadora
The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
Lola Loves Stories by Anna McQuinn
I Got the Rhythm by Connie Schofield-Morrison

Extension Activities

Flannelboard: “Five Little Books”

Flannelboard: “Five Little Snowflakes”

Fingerplay: “Dance Your Fingers Up”
Dance your fingers up, dance your fingers down
Dance your fingers to the side, dance them all around
Dance them on your shoulders, dance them on you head
Dance them on your tummy, and put them all to bed
Credit: Best Kids Book Site [Link no longer works]

Fingerplay: “Two Little Snowflakes”
Two little snowflakes sitting on a hill
One named Jack, the other named Jill
Fly away Jack, fly away Jill
Come back Jack, come back Jill
(Other verses: cloud/quiet & loud; pole/fast & slow)
Credit: Modified from childhood

Song: “If You’re Happy and You Know It”
If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands
If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands
If you’re happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it
If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands
Stomp your feet // Shout hooray
Credit: Childhood

How It Went

Site Information
At this location, I visit four classrooms total, reading to five classrooms total. The first classroom is a combined two-year-olds classroom. Then I visit two three-year-old classrooms and finally a four-year-old & five-year old classroom. I’m at the facility for about two hours, and my voice is definitely feeling it by the end of the visit!

Topic
This particular facility selects themes for me to do ahead of time to tie into their curriculum. For this theme, I wasn’t given a lot of “don’t use that author” like I had been in the previous theme. Which was good — until I hit a classroom and one of the teachers informed me that “The Snowy Day” was their book project for later that day. Whoops?

Two-Year-Olds (Combined classes)
I chose the book “Uh-Oh” especially for this classroom. I only read it for this storytime, since I knew it was a high-appeal book for toddlers. They loved seeing their normal day-to-day activities. I especially liked this choice because it’s a book that shows everyday diversity, which is so important to expose children to. This group was also pros at singing along with “If You’re Happy and You Know It” which made my heart so very happy.

Three-Year-Olds (First classroom)
This class LOVED “This Jazz Man” so much! They tapped along with me as I sang the book and were really attentive as I told them the names of each of the jazz men once the “story” ended. Also, this group was the only one who absolutely protested when I pulled out “The Snowy Day”. They kept telling me over and over again, “But it’s summer!” I wound up making the executive decision to skip the snowflakes rhyme and flannelboard for this group. (I blame Olaf…somehow.)

Three-Year-Olds (Second classroom)
My quietest class of the four; I can’t even say that this class had a favorite activity. This is the classroom that I keep hearing from their teachers about how they count down the days until Miss Katie comes back because they love storytime so much. Which is lovely and wonderful to hear especially since this is my third class and I’m losing steam at this point in the visit!

Four-Year-Olds & Five-Year-Olds (Single classroom)
This class had the best time dancing along to “I Got the Rhythm”. They were amazing little dancers, pulling all kinds of rhythm and hip twists and dance moves that I wasn’t sure that four-year-olds had! (I mean, they beat my moves times 1,000, which um, is easy to do to begin with.) They also loved the Five Little Books flannelboard a lot!