Outreach Storytime: Pets

My turn to choose the theme at our grocery store storytime! I went with Pets since I really wanted to re-use my new flannelboard for My Bus.

The Plan

Books

Caring for Your Lion by Tammi Sauer*
My Bus by Byron Barton*
Stack the Cats by Susie Ghahremani*
This Book Just Ate My Dog! by Richard Byrne
What Pet to Get? by Emma Dodd*

Extension Activities

Flannelboard: “Dear Zoo”*

Flannelboard: “My Bus”*

Puppet & Song: “The Goldfish”*

Puppet: “I Have a Little Turtle”*
I have a little turtle (put hands on top of one another)
He lives in a box (make box)
He swims in a puddle (swimming motion)
He climbs on the rocks (climbing motion)
He snapped at a mosquito (clap)
He snapped at a flea (clap)
He snapped at a minnow (clap)
And he snapped at me (clap)
He caught the mosquito (cup hands together)
He caught the flea (cup hands together)
He caught the minnow (cup hands together)
But he didn’t catch me! (shake finger “no”)
Credit: Childhood

How It Went

This was such a fun storytime! I did My Bus with the flannelboard and the kids loved being able to play the part of a dog or cat to board the bus. (To accommodate larger groups, I double or triple the amount of animals in the story. A bit of math, but it’s manageable.) Our most successful book was What Pet to Get? by Emma Dodd. The kids really enjoyed imagining different kinds of pets and I think the grown-ups appreciated the spot of humor at the end.

I did have a storytime blunder today and completely miss-rhymed during “I Have a Little Turtle”. I’m not sure where my mind was! I think my favorite part of storytime was swimming along to Laurie Berkner’s “The Goldfish” song in the grocery store though. I highly recommend it!