Toddler Art: Numbers

This month's Toddler Art theme was numbers. We read Race CarCount by Rebecca Kai Dotlich and then we did some painting and gluing.

For our first craft, we did some number dot painting with caterpillars and snowmen using black and green paint. The parents helped their child count while they were having fun with paint and using their fine motor skills.

Our second craft was counting cars to go along with our book. Each child had to glue on a different color car to the big number five on their paper. The kids really enjoyed this craft and I found out they are a big fan of cars, inspiring a possible car program for the future.

At the end of craft time, we had a little playtime.

Other Book:

Pop-Up Peekaboo! Numbers

Preschool Picasso: Numbers

It was great to see everyone back after holiday break and a few new families. This month's theme was numbers and it turned into a numbers/ocean theme because I found two craft ideas that I thought were perfect for the program and a rhyming ocean and numbers book to go with the whole theme.

We read One Nighttime Sea by Deborah Lee Rose and counted sea animals along the way. The group enjoyed the pictures and helped count the creatures with me.

For our first craft, we did a paint-by-number fish using cardstock and six types of colored paint. Some children freestyled their painting, but the majority did try to follow the colors for each number.

Our next craft was making an adorable jellyfish with eight tentacles. The kids added eight colorful pipe cleaners onto their pre-cut and pre-hole punched jellyfish body. Then, they added beads to each tentacle depending on how many beads were needed. Some of the group even color matched their pipe cleaners to their beads.

The group loved these crafts and I had compliments on the jellyfish, as well as parents saying they would buy their kids some color-by-number books.

I liked that I was able to incorporate a painting craft using numbers and how the jellyfish craft helped them work on their fine motor skills and offered a different craft approach.

Optional Book: Swallow the Leader: A Counting Book by Danna Smith

Family Storytime: Birthdays

Having a birthday themed storytime was such a great idea! It made everyone excited and was a very fun topic!

The first book I read was Hide and Seek BirthdayTreat by Linda Jennings. This book featured jungle animals who through a surprise birthday party for one of their friends. The pictures were cute and the animals introduced was also a good learning opportunity.

Our first activity was counting candles on our flannel board cake. We went over numbers, counting, and the colors.

The next book I read was Let's Have a Dog Party! by Mikela Prevost. This is a very energetic and chaotic book to read and kept everyone's attention. A little girl wants to have a party for her dog, but her dog just wants quiet. A very adorable picture book.

For our next activity, I handed out color balloons and we each had a turn to put our color on the flannel board. We counted the balloons and then they floated away.

The last book I read was Cupcake by Charise Mericle Harper. The kids loved this book about a cupcake who didn't feel special. The candle's suggestions on what to put on top of cupcake make this book so funny!

We did one more activity and used The Freeze Song off of The Birthday Party CD we have here at the library. We hopped, danced, and tip-toed to the song and froze when their was no music. The kids had a ball!

For our craft, we each made our own cakes and added our age number and the number of candles we need.

This is one of my favorite themes!

Other Books:

Happy Birthday, Moon Frank Asch

A Birthday for Cow! Jan Thomas

Baby Day Jane Godwin & Davina Bell

Happy Birthday, Biscuit!

Messy Besey and the Birthday Overnight Patricia and Fredrick McKissack

Birthday Monsters! Sandra Boynton

Surprise! Sally Noll

Monster's Birthday Hiccups Virginia Mueller

Family Storytime: Numbers and Counting

We ended our summer storytime session by having a learning theme on numbers and counting. The smaller group I had was a bit antsy from the summer weather, so it was a short storytime but we made the most out of it. After following along to the movements in our bean bag song, we read two books, did a flannel activity, and had fun making our craft.

The books we read were Let's Count Goats by Mem Fox and Stack the Cats by Susie Ghahremani. We counted some popsicles on the flannel board and went over their colors before we had to move on to our craft.

For our craft, the group had to glue ladybugs onto their leaves and put one dot on one ladybug, two dots on two ladybugs, and so on until they had five ladybugs filled with dots. This was great counting practice and was a challenge for the younger ones.

Other books on counting/numbers:
 1 Big Salad by Juana Medina
123 Peas by Keith Baker
I Know Numbers! by Taro Gomi
Pretty Kitty by Karen Beaumont
Bear Counts by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman
Groovy Joe Dance Party Countdown by Eric Litwin 

I would have definitely used Pretty Kitty if my group could stand a longer story and Groovy Joe Dance Party has a free movement song to go along with the story.

We'll be taking a storytime break to get some weeding done, putting on other programs, and of course prepping for fall storytime themes. In the meantime, I'll be posting on some of my other programs going on. 

Family Storytime: Numbers

I think numbers might be my favorite concept theme. There's so many activity ideas for this theme and so many books. I always try to make sure at least two stories have a story line, or else you might end up with a bunch of count how many books that might not keep the group's interest. 

After our bean bag song, we read Count Your Chickens by Jo Ellen Bogart and Lori Joy Smith. This isn't so much a counting book as an example of many and more. We did choose to count some chickens in a few of the pages, but we mostly followed along to the rhyme. I chose this book because of it's zany illustrations and flow. 

Who wants to feed the Number Monster? Our first activity was feeding our friendly monster who usually devours the alphabet but enjoys eating numbers too. We used a box to make our monster and die-cut numbers for the group to feed him. It's always fun making the nom nom noises for him and letting out a big burp noise at the end.  

After Number Monster ate his 1's and 2's, it was time to count some goats. Let's Count Goats! by Mem Fox and Jan Thomas is a favorite of mine and every group I've read it to. As one storytimer pointed out to me, the goats look like dogs with horns.

Our next activity was a Number Fun rhyme. We called out the number that matched each rhyming word. 

The group was thirsty for more reading so we read the classic Mouse Count by Ellen Stoll Walsh and One Pup's Up by Marsha Wilson Chall. Mouse Count has a good, short story and One Pup's Up had us counting puppies galore. 

For our craft, we practiced our number and tracing skills by writing out how old we were and tracing the number as we glue cotton balls to our age.  

1, 2 buckle my shoe...