Ocean Storytime

Craft:
Paper plate fish with dot stickers and pens. A couple parents said this was their favorite craft.  I should have asked why, as it is so simple, and I don't think it is very creative.
Supplies:
scissors
white cheap paper plate- large
circle stickers in various sizes
markers
masking tape for tail




I read a variation of the same books at my Toddler Time and Preschool Storytime.

Rub-a-Dub-Sub by Ashaman 

Is a story about a boy in the tub playing with toys, but the reader does not know that until the very end.  There are rhyming sentences on every page that include the sea creatures in the verse. Bright fun colorful pages.  Great read-a- aloud book!

Poor Little Guy by Allen

This is a book with a cute fish that looks harmless, but isn't.  I had to do some explaining and deeper discussion with the toddlers.  It was over their heads, but the parents loved it.  The older preschool kids however did get it and thought the book was funny.

Hooray for Fish by Cousins

This a a staple fish book, I think, for toddler story. The covers colors, shapes, and more.  I think it is too low for preschool.

I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean by Sherry

I love this book!  I wish it came in BIG BOOK size.  It is about a egomaniacal giant squid 

Transportation Storytime & Spring Displays

beep beep!

On Tuesday we did transportation story time with the babies.
I was inspired by the new picture book
by Kate Dopirak & Mary Peterson,
"Twinkle Twinkle Little Car" :

 

  

After surfing the web & finding a cute flannel song, I made the following truck to go along with the lyrics:

There were 5 in the truck and the little hen clucked 

"MOVE OVER! MOVE OVER!"

So they all moved over and one fell out...4...3...2...1...

There were none in the truck and the little hen clucked.... 

"I'VE GOT THE WHOLE TRUCK TO MYSELF, 

I'VE GOT THE WHOLE TRUCK TO MYSELF!"

This spring I am focusing my passive displays on local wildlife & conservation to promote my upcoming programs: Design Your Own Bird Nest, Make a Bee Hotel, and Where Do Birds Nest? - a talk with guests from the Native Songbird Care and Conservation nonprofit in Sebastopol.

           

To peak patron interest and stimulate introverts, I put together the following displays to promote these upcoming sustainability STEM programs for K-3rd & 3rd-5th:

                  

The Stick Together display for Read Across America was such a hit, that we've decided to keep some kind of passive activity in that area for middle grade kids & families. This season we are encouraging kids to trace their Laguna de Santa Rosa neighbors. I printed out and laminated illustrations/photos of local wildlife from Pixabay, referencing the "Field Guide to the Laguna de Santa Rosa." The purpose of this activity is to instill a deeper connection between resident and local wildlife. 

 

  

To compliment this activity I made a "Meet Your Laguna de Santa Rosa Neighbors" display, giving names and friendly gestures to various native plants, mammals, birds, and insects. My goal for this display is to make patrons aware and more conscientious of the diverse wildlife in their area.

       

This season's Early Literacy Scavenger Hunt bookmark was easy to make because of these displays:

All images used are fair use / public domain or given express permission to me to use for such purposes. I collected them from Wiki Commons and credited them as required, and Pixabay. We are maintaining a google spreadsheet to keep track of the images we use.

Happy Thursday,

Courtney Klein, Sebastopol

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. 

Kate's Cats!

I see there is another cat themed storytime post already.  However, I chose different books to read and a different art activity.

"Mama Cat has Three Kittens" by Denise Flemming
A great book full of adjectives and repetitive words.  Large beautiful pictures which are easy to see at the back of a large group.

"Ginger" by Charlotte Voake
Ginger is an adult cat who has difficulty adjusting to a new kitten.  If you have ever owned cats, you will recognized the new kitten problem Ginger endures.

My last book is "I Am Cat" by Jackie Morris. Gorgeous watercolor pictures of cats of all sizes from all over the world. A must have for cat lovers, but all of her books are lovely.

The art project of the week was a cat mask.  The kids needed to cut it out. They could color it if they wanted to or they could choose to leave it white or grey.  Then they just needed to tape a stick to it.

If you want a PDF of the original cat art, email me. ~Kate :-) 

"Z" books

Sandra and I finally finished our alphabet storytime series! I had two books from the Z storytimes that went over really well.

Zero Kisses for Me by Virginie Soumagnac. It's about a little bear who decides he doesn't want any more kisses. It is shorter than most picture books, so I read this one to the toddlers. The parents loved it, of course, and the kids could really relate.

Zin! Zin! Zin! a Violin by Lloyd Moss. This one is a "classic" (1995), about counting and musical instruments and concerts. I love it - I'm afraid it doesn't circulate very well because it's in the 784s instead of picture books. The words are so musical and fun to read out loud. I read it to the preschoolers, and they really got into it - they were all trying to tell me about instruments they have a home, concerts they've gone to, music they like, etc. It was a huge hit.

Dancing Shoes

Last month my favorite story time theme was "shoes."  I know you are thinking, "What an odd theme."  However, with the books and music it came together perfectly.
The first book was " Dog in Boots" by Greg Gormley. A sweet retelling of Puss in Boots, but with a dog.

 My second choice was the original "Pete the Cat" in his cool white Chucks by James Dean.

 The third shoe book was "Shoe Dog" by Megan McDonald the author of the first Chapter "Stink" books.

After stories we put on our dancing shoes and I put on music. I got out scarves for the dancers and I blew bubbles. We all danced around.  Even some of the moms got up and danced too.