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 Eric Carle.
The Plan
Books
1, 2, 3 to the Zoo by Eric Carle***
The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle**
Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too? by Eric Carle*
From Head to Toe by Eric Carle***
Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle**
The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle**
Extension Activities
Flannelboard: “Brown Bear, Brown Bear”***
Flannelboard: “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”***
Prop: “Song Cube”*
Puppets: “Two Little Bears”**
How It Went
First of all, Eric Carle’s books are SO interactive that I barely felt the need to do any extensions activities. We made animal noises during The Very Busy Spider, acted like zoo animals during From Head to Toe and 1, 2, 3 to the Zoo, made our moons bigger and smaller during Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me, pretended to painted during The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse and joined in on the refrain during nearly all of the books.
[I don’t normally do storytime without rhymes/fingerplays, but knowing this school and the group of kids, I was confident that we’d be okay with the books and the interactivity there.]
The toddler rooms really enjoyed The Very Busy Spider and making animals noises. That was definitely their high point.
The pre-k rooms were spell-bound by the flaps in Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me and also enthusiastically participated in From Head to Toe.
The preschool rooms were my loudest chanters during the “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” flannelboard and really enjoyed all the books. I was able to read FIVE BOOKS with them because of Carle’s shorter texts and their incredible attention.
storytime katie 