Family Storytime: Fairy Tales

We had a pretty bad snow storm here yesterday, so the roads were bad and the storytime attendees were slim, but we didn't let that get in the way of our fun.

After doing our movement activity bean-bag song, we started our first fairy tale - The Little Red Hen by Byron Barton. I liked the simplistic illustrations for the storytime environment and we learned the lesson of having a good work ethic and pitching in to help.

Since my small group was so attentive with the first story, we dived right into The Lion and the Mouse by Jenny Broom. This version is beautiful because of the colorful pictures and cutouts. A parent pointed out how much she liked this one and wanted to write down the author and find other similar books. 

I used the flannel board to tell the story of The Wise Old Owl. I used this one before so I pretty much told the story without using any notes. This is a story about a lady who lives in a farm house. She notices two mice in her house and consults the wise old owl on what to do about them. The wise old owl says that she should get a cat to scare away the mice. She does, but the cat makes a mess in her house and now she wants the cat gone. What can make the cat go away? From the wise old owl, a dog of course! What can make the messy dog go away? A tiger of course! What can make the messy tiger go away? An elephant of course! And what can make the messy elephant go away? Well, two mice of course! 

The group seemed to have really enjoyed this story and it allowed them to label each animal and follow along.

Next, we read The Three Bears by Byron Barton. This was the second one of Barton's books that I used and helped to add consistency and familiarity to my storytime. This was the favorite story for the night because they all knew the story of Goldilocks. 

Our final fairy tale was Three Little Pigs by Susan Sandvig Walker. We first read the story together and then listened to the audio cd included. This was a perfect pairing with our Three Little Pigs craft complete with the big, bad wolf!

I found it a little harder to have activities with this theme, but it is definitely a theme worth doing. Next time, I think I'll make a flannel set for one of these stories.