Book of the Month: I'm Sticking with You

I chose I'm Sticking with You by Smriti Prasadam-Halls and illustrated by Steve Small for January's Book of the Month. If you are looking for a picture book that is sweet and loving while teaching friendship this is a great choice to read.

Summary: It's wonderful to have good friends to see you through the good times and the bad. But sometimes, friends can also be a bit...well...overbearing. 

Ages: 4-8 years

"I'm ready to listen to all your ideas. Ready to be there to help you along...Even if sometimes it goes a bit wrong."

Rhyming words and simple pictures complete this book on friendship and love. Prasadam-Halls explains that friendship involves sticking together through the hard times and understanding that sometimes you'll need a break only to miss your friend. 

This is a great book for a frienship storytime because it is short and teaches the characteristics of friendship and love. 

Family Storytime: Fall

This was a nice fall storytime with a great theme that provided a lot of book and activity options.

We started with our bean bag song and then talked a little bit about fall-the leaves, animals, and weather.

Our first book was, We're Going on a Leaf Hunt by Steve Metzger. I always enjoy reading this one for the fall theme because it goes over the colors and the concepts of directions.

This was a perfect opportunity to pull out the tree flannel and add some different color leaves to our tree. We counted each of the colored leaves on the tree and separated them by color.

Next, I read The Busy Little Squirrel by Nancy Tafuri. It's a very cute book about a squirrel who has no time to play because he's getting ready for winter.

Because our book was about a squirrel, I used our five little squirrel flannels and the kids helped counted and liked the rhyme that went with it.

Our next book was Mouse's First Fall by Lauren Thompson. The illustrations are so vibrant in this picture book and it's a cute story that sparks fall conversations with the kids.

We sang "If You're Happy and You Know It" and then read our last book, called Leaves by David Ezra Stein. I love this book's concept about a bear who is confused and concerned that leaves are falling off the trees and shows how bears hibernate for the winter.

For our craft, we used die-cut leaves and traced them with fall colored paint using our fingertips and q-tips, leaving colorful leaf designs on our paper.

Other Books:

When a Tree Grows Cathy Ballou Mealey

Clifford's Puppy Days: Apple-Picking Day Samantha Brooke

Every Autumn Comes the Bear Jim Arnosky

It's Fall Celeste Bishop

The Apple Pie Tree Zoe Hall

Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf Lois Ehlert

Watching the Seasons: Fall Emily C. Dawson

Orange as a Pumpkin Molly Dingles

Let It Fall Maryann Cocca-Leffler

Full of Fall April Pulley Sayre

Preschool Picasso: Animals

I originally made animals the theme for this program because I wanted to make sure I had enough ideas to choose from when it was time to plan the program. I had too many good animal craft choices that I decided to narrow it down to forest/fall animals. I found a book to match that theme and made sure I found good bear and squirrel crafts to use.

 I think the book, Bear and Squirrel are Friends by Deb Pilutti, really helped tie-in this program well. The group enjoyed the book and their crafts.

Their first craft was mixing their blue and white paint on their paper plate to make Blue Bear and adding sticker eyes and die-cut pieces to complete his face. The kids had fun mixing their paint to get light blue and their bears all turned out so cute!

The second craft was making Squirrel. We used die-cut leaves to make Squirrel's tail and I had cut out Squirrel's body to glue onto their construction paper. The parents seemed to have really liked this craft with a few of the moms commenting on how cute it is.

The group wasn't as big as it has been in the past, but I think it was very comfortable for the group because sometimes space can be limited when the group is full. 

 

Family Storytime: Squirrels

We started off late fall storytime with a squirrel theme. This was a very enjoyable storytime with a fun theme and a good group turnout. There were so many good squirrel books to choose from and an animal storytime is always a hit. 

We did our bean bag song and started our first story, Ol' Mama Squirrel by David Ezra Stein. This is a story about a very protective mama squirrel who "chooks" everyone away from her babies. They loved pointing out the baby squirrels in each picture as we continued to read. After the group helped me say "chook, chook, chook," we counted five little squirrels on the flannel board.

I read Aw, Nuts! by Rob McClurkan. This story reminded me of Ice Age's Scrat character with always having to chase a nut. 

After going through all of the shenanigans a squirrel has to go through to get his nut, we followed along to "Gray Squirrel" by Learning Station. This was perfect timing because the kiddos were getting antsy by now. We swished our bushy tails, crinkled up our noses, and picked up nuts and put them on our toes. Everyone did great and it was a perfect opportunity to get their sillies out before we read our last story.

I did have another activity in mind where I would have handed out nuts and each in the group has to feed the squirrel puppet. I found a story to go along with it, but I couldn't find our squirrel puppet in time. We needed a movement activity anyway so it all worked out. 

The group loved the illustrations of the dog in That Pup! by Lindsay Barrett George. This is a sweet story about a curious puppy who keeps finding nuts only to find out they all belong to someone else. 

After awing together during our last book, I explained our craft. I had printed out some squirrel clip-art and had the group glue different colored die-cut leaves to make a tail. This was a cute craft that was perfect with minimal prep effort, but adorable and allowed for gluing practice. I also put out crayons in case they wanted to decorate and make scenery around their squirrel. All their squirrel tails were bushy and colorful. This was such a fun one!

Some more squirrel books I would have loved to have read but didn't have time were I Want That Nut! by Madeline Valentine and Bear and Squirrel are Friends by Deb Pilutti. 

Now, "chook, chook" and read a book and create some art!