Our second week of storytime kicked off yesterday with an arctic animals theme. It was a little parallel to the snow theme, but worked out just fine and was just as much fun.
After going over some of the different types of arctic animals that were on the covers of books being displayed and talking about their cold climate, we shook our sillies out to our bean bag song and jumped right into our first book.
Blown Away by Rob Biddulph was a great book to start out with for this theme. It's a cute story about Penguin Blue and his arctic friends who go on a kite adventure and realize that they are better suited for the arctic and not in the sky or jungle. The group really seemed to enjoy this one and I liked how a lot of different types of arctic animals were represented in the book.
Next, I put up a flannel polar bear on the felt board and asked the group what type of arctic animal it was and what color was it. All the kids love coming up to the flannel board and interacting with it, so I handed out different colored felt balls/circles and told them polar bear wanted to play ball. I called out different colors and each in the group had to bring up their ball color when it was called. We went over all the colors and counted how many balls polar bear had. We got our colors and counting in!
The second book I read was The Lonesome Polar Bear by Jane Cabrera. This is one of my favorites that usually makes every group say "aww" at the end. It is such an adorable story! Polar Bear needs a friend and tries to play with arctic friends who are made of snow, but they keep melting. Needless to say, there's a happy ending!
Since the group seemed more interested in stories than the flannels this time around (yay!), I just did a quick rhyming flannel about five fat walruses using some subtraction.
We moved on to the last story of the evening, Penguin and Pinecone: A Friendship Story by Salina Yoon. This story is about a friendship between a cute penguin and a cold pinecone. One child mentioned how they liked the drawings in the book.
As always, the group was eager to get to their craft. I told them we will be making a penguin for our arctic animal theme and then I asked them what letter does penguin start with...P! We made penguins out of the letter P. I was worried they might have some trouble lining up the die-cut P to the white cutout for Penguin's belly, but everyone did great and was rewarded with polar bear stickers!
Since we did a penguin craft, I thought I would post a picture of the beginning of the year penguin display I duplicated from Pinterest. It was fun making this one, but took some effort.
For this month's Book of the Month, I chose The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin.
Summary: After her best friend dies in a drowning accident, Suzy is convinced that the true cause of the tragedy was a rare jellyfish sting. Retreating into a silent world of imagination, she crafts a plan to prove her theory--even if it means traveling the globe, alone. Suzy's achingly heartfelt journey explores life, death, the astonishing wonder of the universe, and the potential for love and hope right next door. ~From Goodreads.com
Lexile Measure: 740L
Age Range: 11 to 13
"It felt like nothing in the world existed besides me and those words and the silent creatures pulsing all around me."
This was a really emotional read. Suzy is desperate to make sense of her friend's sudden death and believes she died from a rare jellyfish sting. Her best friend's death really affected her so much to the point that she is obsessed with finding everything she can about jellyfish to prove that is how her friend died. There's also the fact that she has stopped talking to others and her parents are concerned enough to take her to a therapist.
I found myself wanting to know the true reason of her friend's death and seeing Suzy overcome the sadness of losing her friend.
What a tearjerker and a book worth reading!
We kicked off our storytimes with a snow theme, despite having no white on
the ground outside. It gave us a chance to use our imaginations and bring some
"snow" into the library. This is always a good theme for winter with
so many books to choose from and enjoy.
I always start my storytimes with a bean bag dance. This allows the group to
get some of their energy out before we start reading together. They really
enjoy following along with the song and putting their bean bag on certain parts
of their body while dancing along the whole time. I've used different songs in
the past, but our favorite is "Bean Bag Rock" by Georgianna Stewart.
Here's a link to a
variation of the song on YouTube.
After I have the group guess what theme we will be reading about by looking
at my storytime book display, it's time to jump right into our first story!
First
Snow by Caldecott Medalist Emily Arnold McCully. This is an adorable
story about a mouse family who go sledding in the snow and one little mouse who
is too scared to go down the hill.
To break up storytime a bit, I added a flannel board activity next. The group built a felt snowman on the flannel board. They always enjoy bringing their pieces up to the board and this activity allows for participation, patience, and excitement. We went over some of the snowman's colors and where his boots and gloves go.
Our second story was also titled First Snow, but is by Bomi Park. I chose this one because it was new in our collection and covered all the fun things we can do in the snow, like making snowballs and snow angels. I also liked the simple illustrations using mainly black and white, with a pop of red. The group seemed to have really followed along with this one.
I always try to have another activity after the second story and for this theme, I used a "Ten Warm Hats" flannel board rhyme. We counted all the hats and began taking them away. We also went over their colors. My storytime is for all ages up to age 8, so my older attendee ended up helping the younger ones with their counting.
Our last story was Mouse's First Snow by Lauren Thompson. Another cute mouse story in the snow. This time, Mouse makes a snowmouse. We enjoyed the cozy story, but were anxious to get to the craft.
What better craft for a snow theme then making a snowman? We made snowmen out of construction paper, complete with a carrot nose, scarf, and some buttons. The group did a great job with their snowmen and each got a snowman face sticker for being such good listeners!
Cozy Cuddles was a storytime program I held this month for kids ages 3-6 years old. What else is cozier than cuddling up to your favorite bear? We read bear stories, made a bear craft or two, and had to enjoy some Teddy Grahams.
The stories are put in order of longest to shortest, with the exception of Bear Hug. The kids wanted one last story and I couldn't say no to that.
Story 1: Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson. Love this rhyming story about a bear sleeping while his animal friends are throwing a party.
Story 2: My Friend Bear by Jez Alborough. Everyone needs a bear friend.
Story 3: Chaucer's First Winter by Stephen Krensky. What happens when a cute, little bear decides not to hibernate?
Story 4: Kiss Kiss by Selma Mandine. A bear learns what a kiss is and that there are all different types of them.
Story 5: Bear Hug by Katharine McEwen. I was impressed by the illustrations.
Craft: Paper Plate Sleeping Bear and Bear Ornament. The bear ornament was from Oriental Trading, but is no longer available.
Toddler Art is a 45-minute program I took over after a co-worker went on to a different library. It is for 1-2 year olds with the goal of having the group learn through all of their senses with various sensory activities centered around a certain theme.
In parent's terms, it's a chance for your kids to get messy and interact with other kids without worrying about having to clean up at home.
This is a fun program to put on and a chance for me to experiment with messier crafts than those we tend to pick for storytimes or other programs.
For this program, we usually have three sensory crafts and a sensory bin. This month's theme was snow.
This program went very well and everyone had fun. The group really enjoyed each craft, with no one having a particular favorite.
We had a reporter come in and interview me and a few parents, as well as take pictures. The group appreciated this and it added to the fun.
The kids really enjoyed painting with marshmallows, playing with the snowman busy bag, and especially the fake snow. The kids who don't like to get messy even enjoyed this one.
Artwork Station 1: Marshmallow Stamping. The group had to fill in their construction paper snowman cutout with white paint by using marshmallows dipped in paint. They added eyes, buttons, and a carrot to complete the snowman.
Artwork Station 2: Snowflake Painting. The group had to paint around their die-cut snowflakes with blue paint and then peel off the die-cut to reveal their snowflakes. I tried blue paint tape, but it was ripping off the paper when trying to peel it off. The die-cuts with double-sided tape in the center worked much better.
Artwork Station 3: Squishy Snowman in a Baggie. Black marker dots for eyes and mouth and a foam carrot for his nose. Shaving cream and glitter are mixed together and put inside the baggie, along with the carrot nose and taped closed. The kids have to line up the carrot nose in the baggie to where it should be on Snowman's face. I had to use black marker to draw on the eyes and mouth of the snowman because the cutouts were not sticking to the baggie.
Sensory Bin: Play snow with two cups of baking soda and 1/2 cup of white hair conditioner. The perfect consistency for me was two cups of baking soda instead of three. Adding too much conditioner makes it more like shaving cream and less like snow. This lasted for a full day before it hardened.
Hi readers. My name is Denise and I've been working in the library field for ten years. I have a B.A. in journalism with a minor in English and do freelance writing on the side when I'm not working full-time as a youth services librarian assistant.
To me, the best part of the job is helping children learn through reading and seeing them having fun with crafts.
I've found wonderful resources online via Pinterest, Google, and various librarian blogs and thought I would hop on the bandwagon, starting the beginning of this year. I plan on blogging about each of my programs throughout the year, offering my lesson plans and comments on how the program went, and doing a few posts on library matters that I come across.
I hope this blog will help those in all educational fields in some way.
Thanks for reading.
