Family Storytime: Dragons

This was such a fun theme. The original theme was Chinese New Year and it inspired the dragon theme for me. I thought the group would understand and have more fun with a dragon theme since most of my group are little ones. 

The more I read to them and see what books keep them intrigued, the more I try to find similar books for upcoming themes. They absolutely loved all of these books and enjoyed the first and last book the most. These books were great for their imaginations.

The books I read were Do Not Bring Your Dragon to the Library by Julie Gassman, The Littlest Dragon by Susan Quinn, and Me and My Dragon by David Biedrzycki. 

For our activities, we did our bean bag song to open storytime and then I did the "Who Am I?" flannel to go over our shapes and play a flannel guessing game at the same time. The flannel is supposed to end up being a dinosaur, but it looked like a dragon too. They enjoyed putting their scales on our dragon.

Our next activity was following along to "If You're Happy and You Know It." I like using this one to break up the books and give them some movement time so they get their energy out. They also like the repetitiveness of the song and doing it mostly every storytime.

Our last activity was counting dragons with a rhyming flannel.

They enjoyed making their dragon crafts and a few stayed behind with me to dance along with their dragons. We used an easier dragon template and popsicle sticks instead of straws. We did some movement exercises and they kept up pretty well.

Really enjoyed this theme!

Other Books:

How to Dress a Dragon by Thelma Lynne Godin

Red Is a Dragon by Roseanne Thong

My First Chinese New Year by Karen Katz

D is For Dragon Dance by Ying Chang Compestine

This Next New Year by Janet S. Wong

Other Activities:

 Dragon, Dragon Movement Song