Yoga and Play Storytime

We lost our Yoga instructor last month, and rather than cancel the events or try to hire someone, I decided to try yoga and play storytime. This morning we had four kids and four adults all participating in the yoga stories, games, songs, and cards, helping each other playfully try to stretch and move our bodies. 

Our First book was Good Morning Yoga by Mariam Gates, and was a great way to get loose and moving. We went right into The Yoga Game by the Sea by Kathy Beliveau. While it was challenging to try to hold the book and try the pose, the small group made it work, and we all took turns trying a pose and showing others how to do it. 

We then each took a card from the yoga deck I have and tried to illustrate the pose to the group.

We were flexible and ready to move using Steve Jenkins and Robin Page's Book MOVE! Which was a fun way to run around and pretend to be animals. 

Then I pulled out the parachute. The secret to the parachute is that you can do the song "Parachute Up" 10 times and the kids will ask for it again. 

"Parachute Up, Parachute Down, Parachute dancing all around the town. Shake it at your shoulders, shake it at your head, shake it at your knees, then tuck right into bed!"

We also did "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes"

Finally we did "Popcorn, popcorn sizzling in a pan. Shake it up, Shake it up, and POP it if you can" The kids hung out underneath and loved to have the parachute lift high for the POP!

We then brought our energy down by using the parachute to calmly lift and fall with our breaths. 

For our final calming down we used some breathing and mindfulness exercise cards from my Yoga Pretzels Deck. 

We also read some short selections from this beautiful book of mindfulness poems. Breathe and Be by Kate Coombs. This is the book that a parent loved so much, she took home to help her wiggly four year old work to practice quieting down. 

The caregivers were very enthusiastic about the program and we talked a little bit about how the books I used were available to check out and that you (and I) do not have to be a professional to engage kids in exercise and play like this. Another thing I liked about using this format for storytime is that I was able to talk about the early literacy tools of moving bodies being important for calming down and a bit about the research that shows that exercises and stretches that cross the mid-line of the body help engage a kid's brains for reading, math, and other concept work. Also, I loved this program because my endorphins are flowing and I got a fun 40 min workout in the beginning of my work day. 

Dots and Storytime

We really like to create connections between our programs and our displays. This allows us to draw our patrons in on many levels. Currently our favorite kind of display is the collaborative art project. We loved the gratitude tree experience, we are trying to repeat it in as many manifestations as we can.  Here is our growing dot collage. Using the die cut machine we made a stack of rainbow dots and are encouraging our patrons to design them and put them up in the window. (We do keep the tape at the desk because tape and three year old's are a bad combination) 

                                                            

To help launch our dot display, I hosted a preschool storytime focusing on creativity and imagination. 

We started with Maybe Something Beautiful by Isabel Campoy. It is a little long, but with some quick edits, it worked as the first book. 

Also included were Lots of Dots by Craig Frazier, The Dot by Peter Reynolds, and Not a Box by Antoinette Portis.

We did songs about art (This is the way we paint the wall) and the hokey-pokey with scarves. 

For my flannel board I just cut out many colored flannel dots and encouraged the children come up and help create a design with dots. Mostly they just wanted to put a flannel piece up, but we did get one lovely flower, a stop light, a mouse, and a car. 

For our craft I put out paper plates with three dots of poster paint (red, yellow, and blue) and put out paint brushes and q-tips for dot painting. I brought in some window dots, and a few of the children painted them and put them up in the window! The next thing we are going to add to our window display is some pictures of artrisits who use dots, and some books that families could use 

Sharing and a Parachute

Thankfulness and Sharing

We had so much fun with a sharing and thankfulness storytime. Sometimes having a group of 8-10 small three-year-olds is perfect. 

"Bow Wow Wow, whose dog are thou? You are _______'s dog. Bow Wow Wow."

As people walked in we wrote down the names on our Dry Erase board, so at each child's name we passed the stuffed dog around the circle until it got back to me. 

We skipped adults, so the small group of kids on the carpet worked out beautifully. 

We had the best conversation with Should I Share My Ice Cream by Mo Willems, many preschoolers had strong feelings about Gerald sharing or not sharing. 

I made a Stone Soup Flannel and handed out the vegetables to the children so that they could each add a vegetable to the soup pot. 

We then shared the Parachute and the songs we came used were:

• If you're happy and you know it shake the chute...jump around
• Popcorn, popcorn sizzling in a pan. We started this with the children holding, but once they got underneath at the end, we had to sing it 2-3 times with them underneath. 
• Parachute up, parachute down, parachute dancing all around the town. Shake it on your shoulders, shake it near your head, shake it at your knees and tuck right into bed. (We all got under the parachute at this last line. We had to sing this three times also. I think the preschoolers could have played with the parachute for the whole half hour!
• We did a round of ring around the rosy, but this was not nearly as popular, and so was harder to coordinate properly; our circle got smooshed and lopsided. 

For our craft we made bookmarks to give as gifts with stickers, since we have a crazy drawer full of stickers, and they had fun.