Outreach Storytime: 6/20

During the summer, I visit several area preschools to do storytime. They all request specific themes, relevant to their curriculum. At this school, I visit a total of six classrooms. Each classroom doubles up with another group creating three storytimes at the visit. I’ll star the materials each time I use it. This week’s theme was Road Trip USA.

The Plan

Books

Go, Go, America by Dan Yaccarino**
Red, White, & Boom by Lee Wardlaw***
Tulip Sees America by Cynthia Rylant & Lisa Desimini**
Who Is Driving? by Leo Timmers*
Wow, America! by Robert Neubecker***

Extension Activities

Flannelboard: “Lots of Cars”***

Flannelboard: “Red, White, & Blue”***

Prop: “Song Cube”***

Action Rhyme: “Everyone Can March”**
Everyone can march, march, march
March, march, march, march, march, march
Everyone can march, march, march
And then we’ll make it stop!
Credit: Jbrary

Fingerplay: “Where is Thumbkin?”***
Credit: Childhood

How It Went

This wasn’t the easier storytime theme to find appropriate books for — let me tell you that! I wound up having a good mix of younger titles (Who Is Driving?, Red, White, and Boom), all ages titles (Wow, America!), and older titles.

A couple of quick notes: I paperclipped one spread in Tulip Sees America because the main character takes his clothes off (nothing showing). And I also didn’t read all of Go, Go, America. I read the pages that introduce the Farley family and then read the Illinois facts that were easy for preschoolers to understand. For my oldest group, I flipped to another couple of states and read a few more facts for them.

My favorite book was definitely Wow, America! because it was perfect for all ages. In my toddler classrooms, we just marveled at the cool things in America. In my preschool and pre-k classrooms, we had great discussions about the monuments and landmarks.

I had a couple of friends who were AMAZING in their US knowledge. One pointed out that the Statue of Liberty was “a gift” and another pointed out that “[the White House] had burned down once”. I was really impressed.