Family Storytime: New Picture Books

For this final week's storytime before winter break, we decided to use this as an opportunity to use some of the library's newer picture books. I took some time to look through our new picture book display and chose a few that I thought would be entertaining enough for storytime. I settled on a Pete the Cat book, a dinosaur story, and a cat story.

We got some wiggles out by following along to the bean bag song and then we read our first book, Pete the Kitty and the Groovy Playdate by Kimberly and James Dean. Pete the Cat is always a hit with the storytime crowd and this book was exciting for them because it was one that they haven't read yet.

Since we read a story about a cat, I pulled out our colored cats flannel and we went over colors and how many were on the board.

Our next book really captivated the group and it's no surprise because of the author. That's What Dinosaurs Do by Jory John was a silly story about a dinosaur who was told not to roar.

Since it was time for another flannel board story and the holidays are right around the corner, I thought it was perfect for us to decorate our own storytime holiday tree. I put up a bare flannel tree on the board and everyone had a couple chances to put their ornaments on the tree. We talked about colors and how many were on the tree and even did some adding since I had a few older kids.

Our final book was a rhyming book about cats and hats…no, not that Dr. Seuss book. This story was Hats are Not for Cats by Jacqueline K. Rayner. This was another book that the group thought was so funny.

I could really tell these books were a hit because all these books were equally well-received with probably Jory John's book being the favorite.

For our craft, we made our own bookmarks using die-cuts and Popsicle sticks.

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?