Magical Mermaid Storytime

 I always wanted to do a mermaid storytime and the day has come! 

For my first book shared, I chose Mermaid School by Joanne Stewart Wetzel. This book is really fun to read out loud and let's imaginations go wild when you wonder how mermaids are in school. 

My next mermaid book read was Coral by Molly Idle. Unique illustrations and a great message about acceptance, handling anger, and enjoying the help and company of others. 

We took a break from reading by counting fish on the flannel board and pointing out their different colors.

Afterwards, it was time to read our last book, Can I Give You a Squish? by Emily Neilson. I love this book and purposely picked it because it's about a mer-boy, so my boy listeners could relate to it more and feel included. I also like this book because it explains to children that sometimes others don't like hugs and to be touched but that there are other ways to welcome and be friendly to each other. 

Since we were done with our last book for storytime, it was time for our craft. I found these adorable seashell crowns that could be decorated and colored and worn on each child. 

I would definitely do this theme again because the books are so much fun! 

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

Dive Into a Book!

We have been displaying summer reading signups using our usual bulletin board display spots so I haven't had a chance to make a bulletin board display all summer. Since we recently ended summer reading, I got my chance. 

I decided to go with an ocean theme because it's August and nothing in particular needs to be shown. Because I love the ocean and seen some awesome ocean display ideas on Pinterest, I combined ideas and used our ocean diecuts to make this display.

This was such a fun one to make and the streamers give it the extra pop I was looking for and make it visually appealing. 

Right now, we are displaying outer space books because of the solar eclipse coming up, but afterwards I might put out some ocean books to go along with the display. 

Speaking of the eclipse, it has been a constant library joke around here asking if we have eclipse glasses. We only have a select number of glasses and have printed out instructions on how to make your own device to view the eclipse safely. This has reminded us of tax season with the constant asking if we have certain forms. 

Coincidentally, I just started reading He Said/She Said by Erin Kelly and the story starts off with a description and explanation of a total eclipse. 

Hope everyone enjoys viewing the upcoming eclipse and is having a great start to the school year!

Family Storytime: Fish

Another appropriate theme for summer, fish! This theme has so many possibilities it really is endless. I never get stuck on this theme when it comes to both finding books and crafts and it seems like new wonderful books and fun craft ideas are always around the corner.

Once we were done bean bag rockin', we read Fidgety Fish by Ruth Galloway. What child can't relate to a curious, fidgeting fish who likes adventure. This book has good flow with its wording and is a pleasure to read to a group.

 We took our usual break with reading by going over some colors and counting using a "Sea Star Wish" rhyming flannel. Each in the group was able to bring up a flannel piece, which they absolutely love, and shared well too.

Next up was Ugly Fish by Kara LaReau and Scott Magoon.  Ugly Fish, is well ugly. And to top it off, he doesn't like to share. This makes him uglier. Will this bully get what's coming to him in his fish tank? This is a slightly silly one that the group sure enjoyed.

Our next break was a five little fish flannel. We counted and went over the colors of each fish and how they were each different. 

Our final story was my favorite, Hooray for Fish! by Lucy Cousins. She has a Hooray for Birds! book that I need to remember to use for a bird storytime.  

For our craft, we continued with the cupcake liner theme and made a fish cupcake liner craft out of construction paper and cutting the liners to make fins. We were even able to practice our "w's" by making waves in the water.

Time to "fish" for more books...

 



 

Family Storytime: The Beach

Ah, a day at the beach. Always a good thing and such a fun, sunny theme for storytime. 

After our startup bean bag song, we got to reading and managed to read four books!

Holly's Day at the Pool by Benson Shum was a good start. This is a good story about bravery and on how silly it can be to worry too much. Holly the hippo is scared to go swimming for the first time. She imagines all the things that could go wrong if she decides to swim. With the help of her hippo family, she overcomes her fear and ends up being a very brave hippo.

For our beach activity, I asked who wanted some ice cream after swimming with Holly. We each got a felt scoop of ice cream of all different colors and "flavors" and each were asked to put their color ice cream on the flannel board when called. We talked about our favorite flavors and colors and counted how many scoops of ice cream were on top of the cone on the flannel board. 

Our next book and the favorite of the day was Pete the Cat: Pete at the Beach by James Dean. My group loves Pete the Cat so I knew I had to read this one. We explored the happenings on the beach with Pete and Pete too was scared of swimming.

I did a quick flannel rhyme using "five little seashells" and then we read our last two books, Noni the Pony Goes to the Beach by Alison Lester and Bugs at the Beach by David A. Carter. Noni and her friends have fun on the beach and the bugs do everything beachy in the sand.  

Bugs at the Beach is an easy reader/beginning reader and I usually don't like using them in storytime because the pictures can be too small for an audience and the sentences sometimes don't flow as well for a read-out-loud, but this was a quick book to end storytime that went along with the theme. 

For our craft, we made octopuses out of cupcake liners and paper strips. We talked about how many legs an octopus has and the kids liked choosing what color cupcake liners to use. 

Doesn't a beach day sound nice right about now?

Toddler Art: Rainbow Fish

July's Toddler Art theme was a Rainbow Fish theme. I changed the program format from three crafts to two crafts and a book to get more reading in there. This turned out to be a great change because both the parents and kids enjoyed the book and we still kept the fundamental idea of sensory crafts. 

I like the idea of tying in crafts and picture books together and found that I didn't have to rely on finding pairings online, but that I could come up with my own craft ideas if I loved the book and wanted to use it. I will usually base the craft on characters/animals in the book, the style of illustration used, and/or if anything was made or crafted in the story. 

Rainbow Fish was a perfect way to try out the one book, two sensory crafts switch. 

I'm sure you are already familiar with this classic book, especially if you are in any teaching profession, but just in case, The Rainbow Fish is about a beautiful, shiny fish who after a little hesitation shares his scales with his friends. 

Even though I'm sure the group has heard this story before, they had no problem listening to it again and awing over the shiny illustrations. 

Segueing into our crafts, we of course made Rainbow Fish and his wise Octopus friend. 

For Rainbow Fish, celery was used as stampers to make Rainbow Fish's scales. We used all the colors of the rainbow, with some kids going from red to purple and others not having any pattern to their scales. The celery was interesting for the kids to smell, some mistaking it for cucumber, and they practiced stamping neatly onto their fish.

For Octopus, fruit loops and white paint were used to make the suckers on each of his eight legs. Some in the group used all fruit loops, and ate some too, while others used their fingertips to make white prints. 

This was another fun time and reassured me that adding a book was a good idea.