Family Storytime: Sharing

I really think it's important to have storytimes that explain manners and other behavior themes, so I was happy we would be having a sharing storytime. This was our last storytime before the holidays and a bit of an experiment to have a sharing theme in place of the usual holiday theme.

After playing with bean bags to the music, we read Share, Big Bear, Share! by Maureen Wright. Big Bear can't seem to get the message to share his berries. 

Because I had a feeling that the group would want at least a little something about the holidays in their storytime, we decorated a flannel tree using flannel ornaments and practiced our sharing and our colors.

Once we had our tree all decorated, it was time to read another story on sharing. It's Not Yours, It's Mine! by Susanna Moores is about how hard it can be to share your favorite toy.

To break our sharing stories up, we counted five little presents under the tree on the flannel board and then got right to the rest of our sharing stories.

That's Not Mine by Anna Kang is a hilarious take on sharing when it can't be decided who gets to sit on a very comfy chair. 

Pigs and a Blanket by James Burks explains how sometimes not willing to share sometimes causes you to feel lonely. The illustrations are so cute in this one!

For our craft, we made a construction paper cookie and cut it in half to share with someone. They liked putting their "chocolate chips" on their cookie and had good practice cutting. The group enjoyed making this and "sharing" their cookie with another.

I know sometimes it can be tricky to do library programs that are related to holidays because a patron may feel left out or offended, but I find that my community craves such programs. Our main rule here is to make sure that no religious messages are in the picture books we read because we absolutely do have patrons of different religious backgrounds and beliefs. We also have plenty of religious books to check out for those patrons who would want that material.

Experimenting with this theme around the holidays, I find that I will probably stick with Santa/holiday books next time and save these themes throughout the year. 

Happy Holidays!